Yu-Gi-Oh: Phoenix Wing Wind Blast
by Mathemagician93
Summary: After the exhibition duel between Yugi and Mokuba, the KC Phoenix Invitational moves on to the main event. Having finished his little experimentation with the powers of the Shadow Games, Mokuba is focused on just going through a normal tournament. However, he soon finds he wasn't the only one who came with a secret agenda... Sequel to A Feather of the Phoenix
1. Chapter 1

Yugi sighed as he slumped against the wall of the elevator. He certainly didn't envy Mokuba for having to stay up on the upper level dealing with sponsors and other business needs before the tournament began in earnest. While his exhibition duel with Mokuba had been completely tame by the standards of the Shadow Games he had experienced through high school, it still left him feeling all too drained by the end of it. Without Atem's presence to lean on, it seemed he just wasn't able to withstand the rigors of Duel Monsters brought to life. He knew this would pass soon- after all, the aftereffects of the duels with Pegasus and Marik had cleared quickly, and those had been much more taxing to him. However, he still was looking forward to getting to rest in the duelist's lounge—and not just for the people who he would meet there.

As the elevator dinged to signify it had arrived on the correct floor, Yugi felt like he had taken a trip into the past. He had been too busy working with Mokuba in preparation for their duel, so this was his first time seeing this room. He had just walked into what looked like an exact replica of the common area of the Battle Ship that had hosted the first half of the Battle City Finals. Still, if the room looked the same, the faces in it were anything but. At the nearest table, Yako Tenma looked up from his tablet briefly and acknowledged Yugi's presence with a nod before returning to work. While Yugi had long since forgiven Pegasus's adopted son for his actions that were driven both by grief and the corruption of the Wicked God Cards, seeing the businessman while suffering from the effects of a quasi-Shadow Game was enough to bring back some unpleasant memories.

Sitting at three separate tables were three new duelists Yugi didn't recognize. The nearest was a blonde man wearing an outfit similar to Kaiba's old blue trenchcoat, although with most of his face hidden in a book Yugi couldn't make out more details than that. Off in the far corner, there was a bald man with a black goatee was busy talking on his phone. Between the two, the last duelist was sitting hunched over the table, shuffling through his cards as he sat by himself. However, while Yugi acknowledged the new faces, the duelists he was really looking forward to seeing were behaving much differently than the rest, as the remaining three duelists in the room were all gathered around the same table and talking animatedly with each other. As Yugi approached the table, the youngest duelist there was the first to notice his approach.

"Oh, it's you, Yugi. What do you both think—do his bangs qualify him to sit at this table? After all, it does seem like it's only blondes allowed." Yugi saw the worry in the 13-year-old girl's eyes and couldn't help but smile back at her in reassurance.

"I'll have my usual scathing comeback later, Rebecca. That last duel took more out of me than expected. The new duel disk worked great, but there are some things about it that probably won't make it into the released product. Not that it was too bad, but still more strenuous than I'd expect in the final version."

Yugi saw the flash of understanding pass through everyone's eyes. Everyone gathered around the table knew exactly what he meant—but also knew that this wasn't the venue to openly discuss what had happened. Everyone here had had at least some experience with the more supernatural side of Duel Monsters, although openly discussing it in public would only have a negative impact both on the game itself and on public perception of their sanity.

Knowing Yugi was fine after his latest duel, the oldest member of the table decided to change the subject. "Speaking of difficult things, I wanted to just say I'm sorry about everything over the past couple of years, Yugi. Both for what I did in California, and for what I must have put you all through when I just dropped off the face of the earth afterwards." Yugi opened his mouth to respond, but Joey cut him off.

"We've been over this, Mai. You don't have to apologize for being manipulated like that. We've all forgiven you a long time ago." Mai sent Joey a glare that Yugi could tell was ready to restart an old argument, so he cut back in.

"Joey, calm down. Everyone has their own process for coming to terms with something like that. I remember the anguish of having someone close to you get hurt because you gave in to the temptation to duel like that. I also remember how hard it is to face everyone after that." Technically they weren't his own memories, but sharing a mind with Atem had allowed Yugi to see exactly what Atem had felt after playing the Seal of Orichalcos. "I'm just glad you finally came back, Mai. It's great to see you again. And Joey does have a point- I've forgiven you a long time ago."

Mai's eyes softened. "Thanks, Yugi. I wish I would have been meet with you sooner, but it took a lot of soul searching and therapy before I was ready to get to this point. I'm not going to let all of that go to waste by not actually apologizing to everyone in person." She paused, glancing around. "Speaking of which, where is everyone else? I didn't get much of a chance to talk about them with Joey last night, so I really have only gotten to hear about how Serenity is doing."

Rebecca quirked an eyebrow at the revelation that Joey and Mai had had some kind of meeting the previous night yet not gotten around to talking about everyone else, but Joey pointedly ignored the teenager. "It's just gotten a lot harder for everyone to find a time to get together. Yugi and I have it easiest since we have the freedom to travel in our jobs, but everyone else has a hard time travelling around. We all get together for the world championships and try to do a couple of other times a year, but usually it's just a couple of us at a time that are able to make it."

Yugi sighed. "At least we've got it better than most. Joey and I still live in Domino, so we can still hang out with Tristan pretty easily since he's just working at the same factory as his dad. It's harder to get in touch with the others- Bakura flew out to Egypt to face some of his own demons and is studying psychology in Cairo, Duke's still living in San Francisco, and Téa's out in New York studying to be a dancer. With all the different time zones, it's pretty hard just trying to get everyone awake at the same time in a group chat, let alone seeing each other."

At this, Rebecca just smirked. "I don't know, Yugi. I'd like to believe you, but ever since Grandpa and I moved to New York I can't help but notice you keep ending up in town about one week out of every month. At this rate, you may as well get your name added to Téa's lease."

Mai found herself wishing she had a camera to immortalize the look on Yugi's face. The King of Games was blushing and sputtering furiously after Rebecca's statement. The older woman smirked and was about to add to her friend's embarrassment when the TV screens in the room that had previously been showing generic messages from sponsors and a story about KaibaCorp's latest charity donation switched to showing images of all eight duelists, meaning the selection for the first match was about to begin. After a few seconds, six of the duelist's faces on the screen went black, with only Rebecca's face as well as the blonde man's being lit. Rebecca nodded and grabbed her deck as Mokuba's voice announced the matchup to the stadium.

"The opening match of the KC Phoenix Invitational Tournament will be defending European champion Vellian Crowler against defending American champion Rebecca Hawkins! Duelists, please come to the stage level."

As Rebecca started walking away, Yugi managed to recover enough from his embarrassment to form full sentences. "Good luck out there, Rebecca—both from me and from Mokuba." Mai decided to add some more helpful information, considering she had started dueling on the European circuit this year as well and thus had a closer knowledge of her opponent. "He may not look that impressive, but his deck is nothing to sneeze at. He runs an—"

Rebecca waved Mai off. "Ancient Gear deck, I know. Once the lineup was announced, I made sure to look into the dueling histories of all the participants. Both for my own advantage, and to do Mokuba a favor and prove nobody was pulling what the von Schroeders did at the Grand Championship a couple years ago. I'm ready for this." With that, she walked away, leaving Mai shaking her head.

"You know, I'm almost jealous of that kid. In some ways, she reminds me a lot of me—she probably had to claw her way up the dueling ladder in the face of people thinking she couldn't, ended up being a champion-caliber duelist, and is still always willing to take you guys down a few pegs when she needs to. Still, she's lucky enough to have made friends with all of you a lot earlier in her life than I did, and from what I remember from out in California she handled getting thrown into the crazy end of Duel Monsters a heck of a lot better than I did." She saw Joey open his mouth as if to argue with her, but on seeing her glare he closed it for a second before responding with what Mai could tell hadn't been the first thing to cross his mind.

"Yeah, she's a great kid all right. Sure, she can drive us up the wall sometimes, but I'm sure if you asked Téa what Tristan and I were like at that age, she'd same the same thing about us." He got a distant look in his eyes as he corrected himself. "Okay, not quite that age. I didn't become friends with Yugi until a year after that, and before I was friends with Yugi I wasn't the kind of person who had friends I could drive up the wall."

This time, it was Yugi jumping in to cut off his friend's self-deprecation. "Joey, you know you weren't that bad. I didn't just make you a better person—I just saw the potential there and you were the one who ultimately made it happen." Joey would have just waved off Yugi's sentiment, but since Mai was here he decided to rehash his argument since it might be something it would help her to hear.

"Yeah, I was the one who decided to be a better person—but only because you saw that better person in me. Since someone else could see him, it made me start to look for him too. Sometimes you need a friend who's willing to look past the bad stuff in order to do it yourself."

Mai shook her head. "Okay, as much as there's some good advice in there, you are laying it on a bit thick with the friendship speech, Joey. You need to take some more lessons from Téa." Just mentioning her name was enough to get the blush creeping back to Yugi's cheeks, and Mai just smirked as she planned her next move. "Speaking of which, what's going on between Mokuba and Rebecca? I can't help but notice something in the way she keeps mentioning him."

Joey looked at her in confusion. "I don't think there's anything going on there. Sure, they're close, but that's just because of some common experiences. They've both been forced to deal with people looking down on them for their age, and have to fight through that in their respective fields. Plus, it's not like any other kids their age went through anything nearly as crazy as they did—so of course they'd gravitate towards each other. They're just best friends."

"Sure, just best friends. Sort of like how Yugi and Téa were 'just friends' on that date before Battle City, and I'm pretty sure someone doesn't fly 6000 miles for a week each month to crash on a friend's couch…" At this, Yugi once again buried his face in his hands, and Mai couldn't help but chuckle. If nothing else, she was starting to uncover a strategy that might give her the edge needed to finally unseat the King of Games.

Rebecca internally groaned as she stuck her hand between the elevator doors, stopping them from closing and letting her get on board with her soon-to-be opponent. However, Crowler wasn't as quick to hide his feelings on the matter, letting out an audible sigh as the teenager boarded the elevator with him. Not one to take anybody's bad attitude, Rebecca planned to use the ride to keep him a captive audience as she made her displeasure unknown.

"You know, there's really no benefit to making me wait to take the trip up. The least you could do is show a little bit of sportsmanship before you end up making a first-round exit."

Crowler merely scoffed at this. "Why must every teenager have such an overinflated opinion of their abilities? It's attitudes like that that make me question why I ever decided to become a teacher. There's no respect, and everybody half your age thinks they run the world. I look forward to teaching you to respect your elders."

Rebecca rolled her eyes. If he was going to insist on treating her like a child, she wasn't going to insist on being the bigger person. "Wow, what a brilliant observation! I'm younger than you! It's not like people have been pointing that out to me for the last six years of my life. Besides, you do realize Duel Monsters is marketed at people my age, don't you? I'm pretty sure you're the odd one out here, Mr. Crowler."

"That's _Doctor_ Crowler. I have a doctorate in dueling, and I deserve to be called by my title."

Rebecca just blinked at that statement. "Okay, two things. First, it's really not that special to have a doctorate—I'm finishing up my thesis right now in fact. Second, what kind of school offers a doctorate in _dueling_? Sure, I know KaibaCorp was thinking about opening some form of school for the game, but that was for kids. Who decided to create an advanced degree course?"

The elevator doors opened on the stadium level, but Crowler paused for a second as he responded. "Yes, I assure you, three years ago I would have been laughing at the idea too. However, you'd be surprised what steps a government will take after the Prime Minister is killed in a Duel Monster attack." With that, he strolled off to his place on the dueling field, leaving Rebecca stunned for a few seconds before she quickly walked to her place as well. After the Orichalcos mess, she had come to accept that all sorts of supernatural weirdness were drawn to her friends- but it was easy to forget that armies of Duel Monsters had attacked around the world as the prelude to Dartz's plot.

As each duelist activated their Duel Disks, Rebecca called out across the field. "Before we start, I'd like to apologize. It seems I underestimated why you got into dueling. Still, even if I respect you more now, just know that I won't be holding back. Let's have a great duel."

Crowler just smirked. "Oh, I think you'll find even without holding back that you are in quite over your head. Now, I believe I get the first move." He drew his first card before making his opening move. "First, I'll summon my Silver Gadget in attack mode. Now, when this monster is summoned, I can Special Summon one Level 4 Machine monster from my hand. So, I think I'll bring forth my Ancient Gear Knight!" The lance-wielding rusted knight appeared on the field next to the gleaming gadget, but Crowler wasn't done with his turn yet. "Now that I have an Ancient Gear monster on the field, I can activate my Ancient Gear Drill card. This handy spell lets me discard an Ancient Gear card in order to set one spell from my deck. So, I'll discard Ancient Gear Gadget in order to set this field spell and end my turn."

Rebecca frowned at Crowler's opening move. Considering his deck, his face-down card was most likely Geartown, which would let him summon any Ancient Gear monster with one less tribute than normal. With Silver Gadget's ability to summon another Gadget monster whenever it was destroyed, that meant she wasn't likely to be able to clear out Crowler's entire field, so he'd be able to summon his strongest monsters next turn. Since her hand consisted of Solemn Wishes, Diamond Head Dragon, Alexandrite Dragon, Silent Doom, and Strong Wind Dragon, she didn't have anything she could use to get rid of the field spell either.

Upon drawing her Dragon Shield card, Rebecca knew she would have to deal with whatever powerful monster Crowler would bring out. Dragon Shield was certainly a helpful card and playing it this turn would save her some life points next turn. However, with the other cards in her hand it was best to save it for later. "First, I'll set one card face down. Then, I'll summon my Alexandrite Dragon in attack mode!" The jewel-encrusted dragon cast a rainbow of reflected light around the stadium as it roared into existence. "Now, Alexandrite Dragon, attack his Ancient Gear Knight with your Fabergé Flame!"

The dragon's 2000 attack points were too much for Crowler's monster to withstand, and the stream of golden flames melted through the knight, taking Crowler down to 7800 life points. However, this was the last move Rebecca could make, so she ended her turn and braced herself for the upcoming assault. Sure enough, Crowler wasted no time in making his move after he drew his card.

"Now I'll activate my facedown Geartown card! With this, I can summon my Ancient Gear Golem by tributing only my Silver Gadget!" The duel field suddenly changed as a city of cogs rose around the combatants, but Rebecca's attention was more focused on the mechanical giant that had taken the place of Crowler's smaller monster. When Crowler made his next move, however, Rebecca realized just how painful deciding not to play Dragon Shield was going to be. "Now, I'll activate my Mystical Space Typhoon! I get to destroy one spell or trap on the field—and I choose my own Geartown!"

A cyclone tore through the city, sending gears flying everywhere as the town was destroyed. "And now that my city has been destroyed, I can Special Summon any Ancient Gear monster from my hand, deck, or Graveyard. Come forth, Ancient Gear Gadjiltron Dragon!" Crowler's most recent monster resembled a scrap metal sculpture of a dragon more than anything else, but despite appearances it still gave him two monsters with 3000 attack points each. With only her Alexandrite Dragon and Solemn Wishes in play, she was about to lose half of her life points.

Crowler was all too aware of his advantage as he entered his Battle Phase. "I say it's time to teach you a lesson about protecting your valuables. Ancient Gear Golem, crush her dragon with your Mechanical Melee!" The giant mecha's fist was roughly the same size as Alexandrite Dragon, and her dragon shattered into pieces as soon as the punch connected. Rebecca's life points clicked down to 7000, but she used this opportunity to make her countermove.

"Your monsters might stop me from activating traps in response to their attacks, but I can still activate them after the Damage Step. I'll activate my Solemn Wishes trap!" Crowler made a show of shaking his head.

"Oh, really? Do you think 500 life points every time you draw a card will really make much of a difference here? Ancient Gear Gadjiltron Dragon, attack her directly with your Ferric Fire Blast!" The holographic fireball still knocked Rebecca back a few steps, and as her life points fell to 4000 she started to wish the duel disks weren't advanced enough to replicate smells—the acrid fumes of the last attack made it more difficult to focus on making her next move.

Crowler ended his turn, leaving Rebecca to draw her next card. She drew Marie the Fallen One, which would be helpful if she got it into the Graveyard but wasn't much use right now. Still, she had everything she needed to make a turnaround. "Since I just drew a card, Solemn Wishes will give me 500 more life points. Then, I'll activate my Silent Doom spell card to bring Alexandrite Dragon back to the field in defense position!"

Rebecca's life points bumped up to 4500, and her jeweled dragon crouched in front of her. However, Crowler was less than impressed. "You do realize Ancient Gear Golem inflicts piercing damage, don't you? Your dragon only has 100 defense points, so you may as well have not summoned anything if you are relying on that to be your shield."

Rebecca just smirked. "Who said anything about defense? I'm sacrificing Alexandrite Dragon in order to summon my Strong Wind Dragon!" The rainbow-colored dragon was replaced by a muscular blue dragon whose very appearance stirred up a whirlwind. "This dragon has quite the list of handy effects. First, just like your Golem, he inflicts piercing damage when attacking a defense monster. Second, he can't be destroyed by battle with a monster that has the same attack. However, the best effect would be if he's summoned by tributing a dragon—like I just did—he gains attack equal to half of the tributed monster's original attack. So, that puts him at 3400 attack points. Now, destroy his Ancient Gear Golem with Wyvern's Windshear!"

The blue dragon lightly flapped his wings, but the apparent lack of effort wasn't reflected in the tornado that surrounded Crowler's Golem. Gashes appeared all throughout the automaton as the wind sliced apart its rusted body until it was finally destroyed, knocking Crowler down to 7400 life points. With that, Rebecca ended her turn, waiting to see what Crowler would do now that she had gained more of an advantage in the duel. As it turned out, she needn't have worried—all Crowler did on his turn was draw a card, growl something under his breath, and end his turn.

Rebecca couldn't help but grin as she saw her next card. "Well, after I take my 500 life points from Solemn Wishes, I'll activate my Hand Destruction spell card! We each discard two cards, and then we can each draw two cards—which will give me yet another 500 life points!" Of course, the 500 life points were more a fringe benefit of the card—what she was looking forward to were the other things that came from its activation. She discarded Marie the Fallen One in order to set the stage to gain another 200 life points each Standby Phase, and also discarded Diamond Head Dragon which was only able to be summoned from her deck and thus was useless in her hand.

The cards she drew to replace her discarded cards left her feeling even better. By drawing Fire Princess and DNA Surgery, she had everything in place to pull off one of her deck's most vicious combos—although it would require waiting until next turn to pull it off. "I'll set this one card face down, and then have Strong Wind Dragon destroy your Gadjiltron Dragon!" Crowler's mechanical dragon fared no better against the typhoon than his golem did, leaving his field empty and dropping his life points down to 7000. While that still gave him the lead over Rebecca's 5500, she was confident that the tides would quickly turn—after all, her deck was designed to slowly chip away at her opponent while restoring her own life points.

However, when Crowler started laughing after he drew his next card, Rebecca realized she might not have been as safe as she had thought. "You're going to regret activating Hand Destruction, kid. The two cards I had before weren't going to do anything to help me. In contrast, the three cards I have now are everything I need. I summon Ancient Gear Wyvern in attack mode!" The monster was a smaller and less overtly threatening version of the previous Gadjiltron Dragon, though with its effect—and Crowler's current attitude—it was obviously a bigger threat than it appeared.

"When my Wyvern is summoned, I'm able to add any Ancient Gear card from my deck to my hand. Of course, it comes at the cost of not being able to set any other cards this turn, but that's not important when I can add my second Ancient Gear Golem to my hand. This will let me activate my next card: Power Bond! I'll fuse my Wyvern with the Ancient Gear Golem and Ancient Gear Soldier in my hand to summon Ultimate Ancient Gear Golem!"

This latest monster took Crowler's previous giant mecha and turned it into an even larger mechanical centaur. However, in this case, its physical size was entirely appropriate for its level of power. "This new monster has all of the effects of my Ancient Gear Golem, and it can also re-summon an Ancient Gear Golem if it leaves the field. Of course, that isn't very likely considering Power Bond gives it 8800 attack points. Now, we simply must get rid of that dragon of yours. Ultimate Ancient Gear Golem, attack with Ultimate Ancient Drill Break!"

The monster's right arm transformed into a drill that looked gigantic even compared to its own massive size, and Rebecca couldn't help but feel this was overkill for her now tiny-looking dragon. However, once the attack hit it took all of her concentration just to stay on her feet as the shockwave from the attack sent her skidding backwards, taking 5400 of her life points and leaving her with only 100 remaining. To his credit, Crowler at least allowed her to recover before he started gloating.

"Do you see now that you should be careful with the cards you play? I highly doubt whatever you drew combined with the 200-life point boost from the Marie the Fallen One you discarded offsets letting me summon my most powerful monster. Sure, I might lose 4400 life points as the cost for using Power Bond, but unless you can summon something with over 8800 attack points I don't see that making a difference."

With that, he ended his turn, but it was Rebecca's turn to gloat. "In some ways, you're right. There's not a single card or even a combination of cards in my deck that can defeat your monster. Luckily for me, I don't need to beat that monster to beat you—and Power Bond's cost just got me four turns closer to victory." Crowler scoffed at her attitude, but it was time to show him just how wrong he was. Rebecca drew her next card, but the Luster Dragon she drew was ultimately pointless—she already had everything she needed. Her life points clicked up to 600 upon drawing her card, and then in her Standby Phase they bumped up to 800 thanks to Marie the Fallen One. Ultimately it wouldn't matter for this turn, but soon enough the crowd would see how vital that was.

"First, I'll summon my Fire Princess in attack mode. Then, I activate my DNA Surgery trap card in order to turn every monster on the field into a Dragon type!" The sorceress in red robes appeared on the field before the effects of her trap card kicked in. Rebecca always marveled at Mokuba's own touch in the latest holograms. While Seto Kaiba had his favored form of interpretation of what a dragon was—typically a western design, preferably with white scales and blue eyes—Mokuba had decided to take a much broader approach to show multiple different perspectives of what cultures viewed dragons to be. In the case of her Fire Princess, the monster didn't so much become a dragon as she became a dragon crossbreed, with a faint scale pattern to her skin and reptilian eyes being the only obvious draconic attributes. Of course, there were still limits to what one company could program as all the various appearances for each monster, so some monsters didn't get the same treatment. Crowler's Ultimate Ancient Gear Golem, for instance, wasn't something that could be easily transformed into a true dragon, so it simply changed to look like someone had grafted the head and wings from his Ancient Gear Gadjiltron Dragon onto the centaur's body.

However, Crowler didn't seem to appreciate the artistic evolution of the game as much as his opponent did. "I fail to see the point of that maneuver. Did you think that Power Bond's attack boost would wear off just because my Ultimate Ancient Gear Golem was no longer a Machine type? And even if it had, your Fire Princess is just a big target. I have 2600 life points left, and I doubt you'll be able to increase your life points six times between now and when I destroy her next turn and inflict over 7000 points of damage."

Rebecca just shook her head. "Well, looks like it's time for a little girl to teach the famed educator a lesson. Since my Fire Princess is now a Dragon type, I can equip her with my Dragon Shield spell card!" Crowler visibly blanched as the dragon shaped armor contorted around the sorceress. "So, now I have a monster that can't be destroyed by card effects or battle, and neither of us take any battle damage from battles involving it. Considering she also takes away 500 of your life points each time I increase mine, and I'm already set up to gain life points twice a turn, you've got three turns left. Of course, you could always just destroy my spell card, but I've seen your strategy. You rely so much on the effects of your Ancient Gear monsters to protect you from spells and traps that you don't run many spell and trap removal cards. Is there even anything in your deck that you could draw to help in this situation?"

Crowler just growled at her. "We'll just have to see, won't we?" He drew his next card, but on adding it to his hand he ended is turn. Rebecca just smirked as she drew her next card—Stamping Destruction—and the boost from Solemn Wishes brought her up to 1300 life points. Immediately after this, Fire Princess twirled her staff and a ball of flame sprouted around Crowler's duel disk, bringing him down to 2100. This lead to Rebecca's Standby Phase, where the spirit of Marie the Fallen One restored her life points by 200 more, letting Fire Princess burn away another 500 of Crowler's life points. With the score now virtually even at 1500 to 1600, Rebecca ended her turn.

Crowler rapidly drew his next card, and Rebecca knew the duel was as good as over. In her years of dueling, she had come to notice there were essentially two types of duelists: those that started playing faster when they were backed into a corner, and those that slowed down in the same situation. In these cases, she had noticed that the duelists who slowed things down had a higher chance of turning the duel around. At first, she had chalked all of this up to coincidence—but then she had met Yugi. Once you took the heart of the cards into play, it would make sense that the duelists who either consciously or subconsciously reached out to their decks would have a better chance of drawing the card they needed than someone who didn't have that connection. With Crowler acting like he was, he wasn't really respecting his deck—which just made it less likely he would get something useful.

Sure enough, Crowler was once again forced to pass on his turn. Rebecca drew her next card, but the Rope of Life she drew was really only important for once again starting Fire Princess's two burn effects that knocked Crowler down to 600 life points as her own clicked up to 2200. While it would be possible for her to play some of her cards, she knew it would be pointless- either Crowler would win next turn if he destroyed Dragon Shield, or he would lose if he couldn't and Fire Princess burned off the rest of his life points.

As she ended her turn, Rebecca couldn't help but be impressed by the level of drama Crowler was putting into his next move. Normally people didn't put that much flourish into a draw unless there was also a world-ending plot hanging in the balance—or if Seto Kaiba was dueling Yugi. It just made the upcoming response to his draw even sadder—after that show, watching the Italian champion practically deflate was really a buzzkill.

"Fine. Seeing as just by ending my turn I'm going to lose before you hit your Main Phase, it seems pointless to do anything but concede the match. I surrender. Just know that this won't happen again. I can guarantee I won't be shut down by a single spell card ever again." Rebecca just rolled her eyes at the attitude, but decided to be the bigger person as she went to shake Crowler's hand. The crowd cheered as the announcer called out, "And the winner of the first match is Rebecca Hawkins!"


	2. Chapter 2

Mai leaned back as she watched Crowler surrender the match on-screen, giving Rebecca the victory. "I'll give the kid some credit: that was one vicious combo. Still, I hope for her sake she has something else up her sleeve, or she won't make it much further in this tournament."

Joey shot her a questioning glance in response. "What do you mean, she won't make it much farther with that? I'm not so sure either of us would do so well if we got caught in that combo. After all, you do realize Harpie's Feather Duster is banned now, right? I seem to remember that being your only real way to clear out spells and traps."

Mai just glared back at him. "You can cut out the weakling act, hon. I watched the video from the last Japanese national championship. I know you wouldn't have to worry about that combo, because you can deal out effect damage faster than Rebecca would be able to recover her life points. Although since I do know that about your deck, I suppose in the interest of fairness I should give you a hint about mine: I don't even need a Feather Duster for my Harpies to eat up my opponent's spells and traps."

Joey rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "Well, can't blame a guy for trying. It's been so long since I've seen you duel that I had to try something to see if I could get a little advantage. Nothing personal—sort of like how you never told me you had Dark Sage in your deck back in Duelist Kingdom, right, Yugi?"

Yugi had mostly recovered from Mai grilling him for details about Téa, but he still shot his best friend a glare for dragging him back out onto some coals. "Oh, ha ha. I believe you more than made up for that when you stole what was at the time my Red Eyes, then used Inferno Fire Blast on me and finished it off by making my Dark Magician attack me directly with Roulette Spider."

Mai quirked her eyebrow at this, so Joey gave her the brief version. "Remember in Battle City how I didn't have my Red Eyes? I had to beat the Pharaoh to get it back. Took me six tries, but I got it in the end."

The friendly bickering was briefly interrupted by the reappearance of the duelists' faces on the screen, with Rebecca grayed out and Crowler blacked out to eliminate them from this random drawing. However, the next matchup still included one familiar face, and this time it was Mokuba's voice that announced the matchup.

"Looks like the second match will feature me, the reigning American Pacific Regional champion against John Sheppard, the reigning Himalayan Regional champion. Mr. Sheppard, if you could please report to the dueling stage."

The bald man with the goatee walked past their group, and Yugi couldn't help but hear him mutter "Perfect…" as he swapped some cards into his deck. He wondered what that was all about, but considering everyone here had passed Rebecca's background checks, he supposed it couldn't be too sinister. And if it had been something more on the magical side that likely wouldn't show up in a background check—well, he supposed he couldn't rule that out, but even when Diva had proven magic wasn't completely out of the picture after Atem left, Yugi had at least noticed something was strange with the supposedly normal Aigami. Yugi wasn't getting any of those sorts of vibes since he had ended his duel with Mokuba, so whatever Sheppard was muttering about must have been more along the lines of mundane tournament intrigue than anything of a mystical persuasion.

Still, Yugi found his eyes tracking Sheppard's progress across the room until Mai's surprisingly timid voice grabbed his attention. "Joey… you don't think we'll end up dueling each other right away, do you?" Yugi clearly wasn't the only one that had noticed her tone, as Joey had taken on the serious expression he usually only wore when someone close to him had their life, soul, or major medical operation on the line.

"Mai, what's wrong? I've seen you go through many things, but I've never heard you scared before. I don't know if I can help, but can I at least listen?" Mai seemed to fight with herself for a little bit before sighing and continuing.

"This is probably stupid, but I can't help but worrying that when I'm out there dueling you, I'll just keep having flashbacks to the last time we dueled. I know this tournament doesn't have any stakes, but I'm not sure I'll be able to go through a duel without seeing you collapse inside the Seal."

Joey clenched his fist, but as this wasn't a problem he could punch into submission he had to fall back to his second instinct. "Mai, I want you to promise me two things. First, no matter how difficult it is, I want you to go out and face this. You don't have to beat it right away, but fighting it is the only way to get through. Remember when I said it took six tries to beat the Pharaoh? The first two didn't really count, because every time I knocked down his life points I saw that anchor at Battle City dragging Yugi down into the ocean."

"Yeah, but that was because of Marik, and need I remind you that you kicked him out of your head and saved Yugi. I chose to join Dartz, and then I succeeded in taking your soul before I snapped out of it. And don't blame it on manipulation, because I have to live up to the choices I made."

Yugi could tell Joey didn't agree with Mai, but he wisely chose to stay silent on that matter and moved on. "Anyway, the second thing I wanted you to promise me is that you'll talk with Téa after this tournament. She has a gift for helping people through stuff like this—or at least, she really helped me get my head on straight after my first two duels with the Pharaoh and I know she also helped Yugi after the Pharaoh almost knocked Kaiba off of Pegasus's castle."

Mai's eyes went wide. "Wait, is that why you were struggling so much in your duel with me? I can't remember what I said to you, but I'm sorry for being so rude to you—especially knowing what you went through right before that." Yugi shook his head in response.

"I needed to hear it. It was the push I needed to stop trying to shut Atem—the Pharaoh—out. Though Joey's right about Téa. If she hadn't been willing to duel you for me, I don't know if I could have even made it to the point where I was dueling you. She just has a way of helping you find the best in yourself, even if you can't see it yourself."

Mai took one look at the look on Yugi's face as he talked about Téa and couldn't find the heart to bring him down by teasing him about it. Even if she had wanted to, however, she would have lost the opportunity as Rebecca came running up to the table and somehow managed to gracefully slide into her seat without slowing down.

"Oh, great. Made it in time. I was worried I'd miss all of Mokuba's duel before I could get here." Considering the television screens were just showing Sheppard stepping out of the elevator, Joey couldn't help his confusion. "What do you mean, you'd miss the duel? You must have gotten off of the elevator once Sheppard got on, and it doesn't take that long to walk down a hallway."

Rebecca scoffed at Joey once again. "Seriously, do you do any research at all into your competition? I know this is basically an exhibition match, but I'm not sure how you got to be the favorite to win the Japanese title with that kind of lax attitude."

Yugi cut off his younger friend. "To be fair to Joey, it's not like I religiously poured over the decks of my opponents before dueling them anyway. I mean, Pegasus only used his Toon deck once against Kaiba before I dueled him, Marik kept pulling out new effects from the Winged Dragon of Ra and seemed to switch up his deck to fit whatever Shadow Game he wanted to create, and Dartz used a deck that with the exception of the Seal of Orichalcos was made of cards I had never seen before."

He then turned back to Joey. "She does have a point though. I've dueled against Mokuba a few times as part of my work with Kaiba Corp, and his deck is built to end duels quickly. Unless he's taking the first turn of a duel, any turn of his could be enough to take all of his opponent's life points."

At this, Rebecca shot a smug glance towards Joey. "See, it pays to know these things. One thing Yugi probably doesn't know, though, is that Sheppard practically uses the same deck. Since either of them could wipe out the other in one turn, it wouldn't surprise me if this duel ended within the first couple of turns."

Rebecca wasn't the only one who was excited for the upcoming matchup. As Mokuba shook hands with his opponent, he couldn't help but share his enthusiasm. "This is going to be great. I haven't run across anybody else who uses Cyber Dragons before now, and I'm interested in seeing how my variation on the deck compares to yours."

Sheppard frowned at Mokuba's excitement. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to disappoint you on multiple fronts. I no longer have Cyber Dragons in my deck- I've passed them on to my protégé Zane, who's a little bit younger than you are now. However, the fact that you are using Cyber Dragons at all is posing a huge problem—and I don't like having to be the person to try and rectify that situation."

Mokuba hardened his face into the trademark Kaiba glare he had been forced to perfect in his brother's absence. "I'd be careful if I were you. That almost sounded like a threat. You'll find that I don't take threats to things I care about lightly."

Sheppard seemed to be cowed by the hostility. "I don't mean it to be that way at all—though my hands are somewhat tied. Still, if you count the cards as something you care about, we might be able to take the easier path here—"

Whatever Sheppard was about to say was interrupted by the tournament announcer loudly clearing his throat. This was enough to both duelists' attention to the fact they were currently standing in the middle of a large crowd expecting them to duel, not converse. The older duelist shook his head as he started walking to his position, but called over his shoulder, "Look, I realize a duel isn't the best place to have a conversation. Still, I'm going to try to explain myself, and can you at least promise to talk with me after the tournament when we'll have more time?"

Mokuba briefly thought back to the duels of a couple years ago, where things like his brother's duel against Yugi at Battle City or the tag duel against Dartz seemed to last for hours with all the exchanged banter, card-explaining, and ancient destiny monologues. It seemed this duel might be going down a similar path. However, his curiosity was sufficiently piqued for him to respond to Sheppard with a nod—and then realizing the older man wasn't facing him, a quick "I'll talk with you when this tournament finishes."

With the pre-duel conversation cut short, Mokuba drew his opening hand, which consisted of Cyber Valley, Evolution Burst, Polymerization, and two Cyber Dragons. Sheppard likewise investigated his opening hand before addressing his opponent. "Well, since I will need to be the one doing the most talking, how about I go first?"

Mokuba's eyes narrowed, but he nodded his agreement. Thanks to the effect of Cyber Dragon, most of his deck's plays went off even easier if his opponent had a monster while he didn't—which was why Mokuba preferred to take the second turn in his duels. However, since Sheppard had played Cyber Dragons of his own, that meant Sheppard knew full well what he was getting into and likely had a hand that would let him counter that advantage.

Sheppard drew his first card and started his explanation. "The reason you've put me in a tough spot is Cyber Dragons are only supposed to be used by members of our order. They are the sacred guardians of our temple, and having an outsider use them is seen by some as an act of heresy. So, I was sent to rectify this situation by making sure you took one of two paths."

He set one spell or trap face down. "First, I could defeat you, and force you to stop using the Cyber Dragons so they are no longer outside of our control." Setting another card in his back row, he continued, "The second option involves you joining our order, and thus no longer being an outsider. While this is preferable to the first, I know you can't afford to leave everything behind to spend months to years in the mountains of Nepal, so following that logic, I have no choice but to follow the first path."

Having stated this, he then smiled at Mokuba as he set a third card. "Of course, if there's one thing I look forward to in my students, it's the ability to be flexible. If you are faced with two impossible paths, carve your own third path. Find a way to be part of our society without being a full-time member. Convince me that you are worthy of the honor and be ready to convince all others who would challenge you."

He ended his speech by setting a monster in defense mode and ended his turn, leaving Mokuba a little wrong-footed at the change in demeanor. However, one did not get to be the head of Kaiba Corporation by getting shaken that easily, and Mokuba quickly recovered with a smirk of his own as he drew Magnet Reverse. Immediately after drawing the card, however, Sheppard interrupted him.

"I activate my trap, Cyber Summon Blaster!" The first card he had set flipped up, bringing forth a tank with a giant radar dish on top of it. "This card inflicts 300 damage to my opponent whenever a Machine monster is Special Summoned. It's quite the weapon in a Cyber Dragon deck—but more importantly, just as effective of a weapon against a Cyber Dragon deck."

Having such a card sprung against him before he could make his first move was a little bit disappointing, but ultimately the card wasn't as effective as it sounded. "You do realize most players would gladly pay 300 life points to be able to Special Summon their deck's central monster from their hand, right? It may no longer be free, but I'll gladly pay such a small price to be able to summon my Cyber Dragon!"

The serpentine dragon burst out of the ground with a crackle of blue energy, snarling at Sheppard. Mokuba expected to hear the whine as Sheppard's blaster prepared to fire, but what he hadn't expected was for the leftover blue energy radiating from Cyber Dragon to suddenly gather on Sheppard's side of the field. The egg-shaped mass only lasted for a second before it violently burst open revealing a mechanical tyrannosaurus, which let out a deafening roar that served to silence Mokuba's dragon.

"You may not have worried about the trap on the field, but you should have worried about the trap in my hand. I can Special Summon my Cyber Dinosaur from my hand whenever you Special Summon a monster from your hand—and my monster is 400 points stronger than your dragon. Of course, since two Machine monsters were just Special Summoned, my Blaster gets to inflict damage twice."

The appearance of Sheppard's monster took Mokuba by enough surprise that he had forgotten about the charging blaster, but Sheppard's words gave him just enough warning to brace himself as the radar dish unleashed two blasts of lightning, bringing him down to 7400 life points. So far this hadn't been the best of starts for the young Kaiba, but luckily he still had the cards he needed to turn this around.

"My dragon may be outmatched now, but that won't last for long. I activate my spell card Evolution Burst, which lets me destroy any one of your cards at the cost of my Cyber Dragon being unable to attack this turn. Cyber Dragon, destroy his facedown card on the far right!"

The Cyber Dragon hissed and spat out an arc of blue lightning which vaporized the facedown trap, which turned out to have been Cyber Shadow Gardna. Still, Sheppard seemed confused at Mokuba's tactic. "So, you had the opportunity to destroy my Dinosaur, but instead you went after one of my facedown cards. What are you planning?"

Mokuba just smirked back. "I'll show you, but first, how about you listen to one of my questions? You say that the Cyber Dragons are the sacred guardians of your temple. I mean no offense by this question, but why? They aren't based on any spirits or deities that I'm aware of, which means these cards only have as much meaning as you would give to them. I know exactly why they are important to me, but why are they important to you?"

Sheppard's gaze hardened as he responded. "Honestly, I haven't seen enough about you yet to know if deserve to hear our story. It's rather rude to ask such a personal question without being willing to share your own reasons as well."

Mokuba took a deep breath as he prepared his response. The particular pull he felt towards the Cyber Dragons wasn't something he could fully explain. Once he had held the cards, he knew they would be the ones he would build his deck around, but he wasn't quite sure why. Of course, he wasn't sure if he'd ever learn the full reason—after all, Yugi wouldn't have known his connection to the Dark Magician was due to the spirit of the Dark Magician swearing eternal loyalty to his past life if he hadn't gotten the chance to find that past life's memories. And Seto had been quite vehement that his attachment to the Blue Eyes White Dragon had nothing to do with the fact a high priest who looked much like him had a complicated relationship with a woman who had housed the dragon's spirit—though the fact that he had provided this much detail when Mokuba had broached past lives indicated it was quite often on his mind.

Not being able to explain the full reason why he used the cards, Mokuba decided to share the reason he had sought out the cards in the first place. "It all goes back to when my brother disappeared. Back then, when people heard the name Kaiba, they thought of two things: our company and my brother's Blue Eyes White Dragons. I was suddenly in charge of the company, and I wanted to provide just as strong of a presence on the dueling field. Then I saw the Cyber Dragons and they just reminded me too much of the Blue Eyes—with being Light attribute dragons that could fuse into a three-headed version of themselves."

"As I looked into it more, I realized that viewing the Cyber Dragons as successors to Blue Eyes gave me even more to strive for. The Cyber Dragons were weaker than their predecessors, but their abilities gave them the potential to do new things—like this! I activate Polymerization to fuse the Cyber Dragon on the field with the Cyber Dragon in my hand to summon Cyber Twin Dragon!"

The second Cyber Dragon coiled around the first, and blue arcs of electricity jumped between the two eventually welding them into a single body with 2800 attack points—and the ability to attack twice each turn. Mokuba didn't even bother watching the fusion finish as he finished his story. "These cards serve to constantly remind me that I can achieve great things even if a part of me will always be in my brother's shadow. They are the goal I strive towards!"

Mokuba hadn't realized how emotional his speech had gotten until he was suddenly forced to stop talking when another blast of electricity from Sheppard's trap hit him and knocked him down to 7100 life points. The minor shock was enough to get him back in the game, though his opponent was just shaking his head at him.

"After that, I almost feel bad for the move I just pulled. You might want to take a closer look at Cyber Twin Dragon." Mokuba glanced at his monster and didn't see what Sheppard was talking about- until he noticed an orange band nearly hidden away at each of the joints connecting two segments of the dragon's body. The bands seemed to grow in size until Mokuba was able to make out that they were made out of flames before his monster was forcibly dragged over to Sheppard's side of the field.

"By Fusion Summoning a monster, you allowed me to activate my Chthonian Polymer trap card. I had to sacrifice my face-down Cyber Phoenix to do so, but that's a small price to pay to take control of your monster."

Mokuba couldn't help but wonder how things had gotten so far out of his control. Every time he summoned something, Sheppard had either used it as an opportunity to summon something stronger, or simply taken control of the monster he had just summoned. To top it all off, he had taken damage every move he made. The only saving grace was he still had one move left—and hopefully it would be able to protect him from the 8100 damage he would otherwise take next turn.

"I still haven't Normal Summoned anything this turn, so I'll summon my Cyber Valley in attack mode to end my turn." The smaller variant of a Cyber Dragon appeared on the field, though this monster looked more like an organic snake covered in armor instead of a fully mechanical creature. Statistically this monster was much weaker than any other Cyber Dragon variant with zero attack or defense points, but it made up for that shortcoming by having a variety of useful effects.

Sheppard sighed as he drew his next card. "I guess it's only fair to explain why our order uses Cyber Dragons, since you explained your reason. Or at least, the short version. Around 15 years ago in Tibet, an avalanche threatened to destroy a small village. However, the snow seemed to part around the village, saving everyone. One of the novice monks in the area at the time swore he saw a metal dragon attack the snowpack to change the flow. The rest of the village was quickly convinced that he had hallucinated the whole thing, and when he refused to change his story the monk was treated as if he were insane."

Sheppard set the card he had drawn into his spell and trap zone as he continued. "Over the course of the next 13 years, his continued insistence became something of a joke to the locals—and any of the artwork he created trying to honor the guardian spirits he saw ended up just being sold to tourists as a local curiosity. Then that all changed one fateful week, due to two unrelated events.

First, I arrived in the village to visit a friend who had moved there. Ultimately this wasn't the important thing, but what was important was Industrial Illusions had just released the first Cyber Dragon cards, and I happened to have one of them in my deck. I thought it was an interesting coincidence when I saw sculptures based on the card, but later that week the village came under attack by monsters in armor.

Of course, later on, we realized this wasn't something that limited to our particular location, and we had just gotten involved in a global outbreak of the monsters. We were about to get slaughtered—until multiple real life Cyber Dragons appeared and started fighting back. This saved the life of three quarters of the village, though the monsters faded away after the attack. In honor of the spirits that saved our life, and in remembrance of those who died there, we wanted to gather all the Cyber Dragon cards in the world in order to teach people how to use them properly."

Sheppard looked prepared to continue, but one of the members of the crowd took this moment to shout out, "Get on with the duel!" Realizing his short version hadn't been that short, he rubbed the back of his neck. "Like I said, I can give you more details later. Now, I know this ultimately won't work, but I can't just let you choose to use Cyber Valley's other effects, so I'm going to have to attack it. Cyber Dinosaur, Cretaceous Charge!"

The tyrannosaur cloaked its body in electricity and started to run towards Cyber Valley, though it didn't make it more then a single step before Mokuba's monster exploded. This seemed to let out an electromagnetic pulse that deactivated all the other monsters on the field. Mokuba blinked in surprise before drawing the card offered by Cyber Valley's effect, and with the effect resolved the monsters reactivated as Sheppard's Main Phase 2 began. Mokuba couldn't help but chuckle at his opponent. "Remind me to give out a bonus after this is over. Somebody really worked to overhaul that effect if all the monsters on the field were Machine type."

Sheppard couldn't help but smile back at his opponent as he ended his turn. Mokuba took a deep breath as he prepared to draw. The Magnet Reverse and Magnet Force in his hand weren't enough to help him right now, but the former would let him make a brilliant comeback if he drew the right card. Of course, even if he wasn't able to work well with his deck, he knew the odds were still in his favor. For the play he wanted to make, he could draw any one of eleven cards in his deck. He drew his next card and smirked at his opponent. "I summon—"

Sheppard quickly interrupted him. "Since you are starting your Main Phase, I activate my Cyber Shadow Gardna trap card!" The trap card summoned itself as a monster, looking like a black mechanical angel, though Mokuba knew it would be able to shapeshift into whatever monster it battled. Sheppard just kept grinning. "By my trap's effect, it is Special Summoned as a Machine type monster, which means my Blaster activates. And since this trap can keep setting itself unless you sacrifice a monster attacking it or use an effect, you might need to get used to this happening over and over again."

The radar dish blasted Mokuba again, but he didn't particularly care about the fact that his life points went down to 6800. He had been worried about Sheppard's facedown card considering how well the man had countered every move so far, but now that he knew what it was he had gone from turning the duel around this turn to outright winning it this turn. "I'll admit, it's been fun dueling you, but it's time for that to end. As I was saying before you activated your trap, I summon my Cyber Dragon Zwei to the field!"

The new monster more closely resembled Cyber Dragon than Cyber Valley had, only having a more triangular head and slightly smaller size as the noticeable differences. "As I'm sure you know, my newest monster can change its name to Cyber Dragon as long as I reveal a Spell card in my hand to you. So, I'll show you my Magnet Reverse to activate that effect!" In a blue flash, Cyber Dragon Zwei's head changed shape to match the original dragon, though Sheppard wasn't clear what the point of all of this was.

Mokuba couldn't help the victorious grin that came to his face. "Confused? Don't worry, it won't last for long. I just needed a Cyber Dragon on the field in order to summon this monster from my Extra Deck." Sheppard continued to stare.

"How? Since one of the cards in your hand is Magnet Reverse, and you only have one other card, you can't have something in your hand to both give you more materials for the fusion and a card that will let you actually fuse them."

"Simple. I happen to have a monster that can summon itself without Polymerization. And while I may not have all the needed materials, you certainly do. I'll send Cyber Dragon Zwei, Cyber Twin Dragon, Cyber Dinosaur, and Cyber Shadow Gardna to the Graveyard in order to Special Summon my Chimeratech Fortress Dragon!"

Cyber Dragon Zwei started emitting sparks and arcs of lightning as it overloaded its internal circuitry to create a giant electromagnetic field. The pull of this field soon proved to be too much for all of the Machine monsters on Sheppard's field, who though they tried to resist the pull only ended up being broken down into parts for their trouble. The parts soon welded themselves together in the form of a giant dragon with multiple hatches along its body—three of which opened up to reveal the heads of the draconic monsters used to summon the behemoth.

Mokuba had expected Sheppard to be surprised or a little upset that his three monsters had just been taken from him to create a 4000-attack point behemoth, but he hadn't expected the look of terror that crossed the older man's face. "You would go so far as to use a Chimeratech monster in a friendly duel? While I am not familiar with the Fortress Dragon, we have a deck that uses two other Chimeratech monsters. We were forced to seal it away because everyone who summoned one suddenly developed heart problems."

This news quickly robbed Mokuba of any of the thrill of victory—much more so than the easily ignored 300 points of damage he took from Cyber Summon Blaster. It might have seemed crazy on the surface that a simple trading card could cause heart problems, but Mokuba had seen first hand what the Seal of Orichalcos or a fake Winged Dragon of Ra could do.

"Okay, I'm definitely going to need to examine those cards after this tournament. I haven't had any problems with using Fortress Dragon before, but it's my duty to make sure it's safe to enjoy the game. Maybe it's a different card in the deck that's the problem, so I'll have to examine the whole thing. Now, how about we finish this duel? I'll activate the Magnet Reverse I showed you earlier, letting me summon one Machine monster from my Graveyard that can't be Normal Summoned. Since it's impossible to Normal Summon a fusion monster, that makes my Cyber Twin Dragon the perfect target."

The two-headed dragon returned to Mokuba's field, letting Sheppard's trap once again inflict 300 damage to Mokuba. Still, it was pointless as the duel was effectively over. "Chimeratech Fortress Dragon, Evolution Result Artillery!" All four heads on the giant monster blasted Sheppard with a sonic wave, taking away half of his life points. As soon as he straightened up from the aftereffects of the damage, Mokuba called his last move. "Now, Cyber Twin Dragon, attack him directly twice! Evolution Twin Burst!"

The dragon's left head let out a burst of orange plasma that knocked Sheppard's life points down to 1200. The right head immediately followed this up with an attack of its own, knocking Sheppard down to 0. Mokuba didn't even bother waiting for the counter to finish decreasing as he started walking across the field to shake the older man's hand. The crowd seemed shocked at such a quick conclusion to the duel, but they burst into cheers as the announcer called out, "And in a shocking turnaround, Mokuba Kaiba advances by taking all of his opponent's life points in a single turn!"


	3. Chapter 3

"See, told you Mokuba would be able to win his duel quickly. I'd like to see you top a one-turn kill on your second turn." Joey rolled his eyes at Rebecca's statement before an evil gleam came across them. She was probably trying to rile him up and turn this into some sort of big macho competition between him and Mokuba. Had it been two years ago and the other Kaiba brother, such a technique probably would have thrown him off for the rest of the tournament. Luckily, he was more mature now and Mokuba was just way too nice of a guy now to get mad at. Still, this didn't mean he couldn't use some of Rebecca's techniques right back at her.

He reached over and ruffled her hair—something he had used to do to Serenity back before the divorce. While Rebecca didn't quite have that history, she recognized the patronizing gesture for what it was and simmered a bit at letting Joey get to her with the classic 'treat the prodigy like she's a little kid' routine. She wasn't used to someone taking the physical approach, so it took her a little bit to recover—time that Mai used to take control of the conversation.

"Well, looks like now it's time to see if we'll actually take each other on. So, how does the world's luckiest duelist feel about this particular fifty-fifty chance?" Joey recognized Mai trying to cover her insecurity with bluster, but since she had already opened up about her feelings he recognized it more as her trying to resume her normal attitude than actually hiding from a problem. So, he decided to take the banter right back to her.

"Well, looks like I finally get the chance to teach you something. It's not a fifty-fifty chance—the chances of us dueling each other this round are one in three. This is just like a card trick Duke used to make me look like an idiot back in high school. See, you think because you are picking two out of four you have an equal shot of getting a matching set—but you have to think of it as picking one duelist and then picking a second duelist. If you get selected first, it then becomes a one in three chance that I'm your opponent—and so on for each possible pick of the first duelist. So, odds are, we won't end up dueling each other this round."

The random selection process started just as he finished talking, but the duelist who had made a career of letting his luck top what would otherwise be insurmountable odds was shocked to see the two names on screen: reigning Russian national champion Yako Tenma and the American Midwest Regional champion Jamaal Williams. While it didn't mean he was dueling Mai right away, it guaranteed they would be dueling in the last duel of the first round. Mai just sighed.

"Well, I guess the one consolation here is that you don't use your old deck anymore. Now that you've actually got enough skill to win without her, Lady Luck seems to have turned away from you."

"I resent the implication there, Mai. Like I'd ever stop using my old deck." With that, Joey reached into the deck case he had attached on his belt and pulled out a second deck, as well as a standard die. "I can't use this in tournaments anymore since we switched to the post-errata format, but I like to keep this on me as a reminder of where I came from. Even if I can only use it in friendly duels..."

Joey trailed off as he considered what he just said. With an idea firmly set in his mind, he smiled back at Mai. "Say, how about we just have a little friendly match before we go out on stage? It might help show that everything will be fine when you duel me. And to make sure there's no unfair advantage here, you can use my pre-errata deck and I'll use Yugi's. You're fine with that, right, Yugi?

Yugi was already reaching for his deck as he started to answer, but Mai cut him off. "Actually, do you mind if I use your deck, Yugi? I've never been one to rely on luck, so I'm not sure how well I'd be able to use most of Joey's old cards. Sure, I'll be at a disadvantage in terms of the Heart of the Cards, but I can't pass up a chance to see what makes the King of Games's deck tick."

"I'm pretty sure you already know what makes my deck work, Mai. Just treat my cards with the same respect you treat yours and I'm sure they'll work just fine for you." He handed his cards over to her, then scooted away from the table to give the two more space to duel. Rebecca likewise scooted closer to the TV screen.

"No offense to you two, but I'm going to focus on the tournament instead of your little friendly duel. Especially since this is the only duel where I don't have a good idea of the decks in use."

Joey had mostly waved off Rebecca's choice as he studied his opening hand, but hearing her last sentence he couldn't help but chime in. "Wait, so after spending all of this time hounding me for not studying my opponents, NOW you can say that you don't know their decks? Seems a little unfair to me."

Yugi saw Rebecca roll her eyes, but since Joey wasn't looking at her the effect was lost. Still, she didn't seem to realize that as he carried on. "It's exactly because I've researched the duelists that I know not to make assumptions about their cards. Well, Yako has been pretty consistent in his recent appearances, but Jamaal seems to make it his mission to show up to each tournament with a new deck. I've actually beaten him at the last two national championships. The first time he had a warrior-based beatdown deck, and the second time he was using a dragon-based lockdown deck. He could be using anything, so I'll have to watch this round."

Yugi couldn't help a sudden feeling of nervousness. "You say Yako has been consistent. Is he still focusing on cards like Beast King Barbaros, or is it something else?" Rebecca noticed the odd note in Yugi's voice and turned towards him. "Well, I wouldn't quite say it focuses on Beast King Barbaros, but that and Beast Machine King Barbaros Ür have been his heavy hitters. Sort of like how I wouldn't say your deck truly focuses on the Dark Magician but it's still your main card. Why do you ask though?"

Yugi sighed. "I dueled him once before, a little bit before the Orichalcos mess. He was under the influence of a set of cards known as the Wicked Gods. As you can probably guess, they were basically evil versions of the Egyptian God cards, and were just as dangerous in the wrong hands. I saw him tear up the worst card of the bunch, but I'm not sure what happened to the other two. I just really don't want to see history repeat itself there again."

Rebecca's eyes widened in surprise. Yugi had always been open about the events he had gone through during his high school years, whether it was attempted murder, soul-stealing trading cards, or multiple world-ending plots. However, this was the first she was hearing about the Wicked Gods, and it sounded like Yugi hadn't fully gotten over whatever that adventure had entailed. It clearly wasn't as far-reaching as some of the other plots he had been involved in since there wasn't the global apocalyptic reaction like the Orichalcos or Zorc's near-awakening, but that didn't mean it couldn't have had a bigger personal toll on Yugi.

Still, if Yugi wasn't ready to talk about the events, Rebecca knew she shouldn't press him for more details. He hadn't completely shut her out, so she felt fine with investigating it more on her own later, but for now, she was content to let the subject drop and turn her attention back to the tournament. As Jamaal and Yako shook hands, Rebecca briefly wondered if this was what the audience at Bandit Keith's last duel as American champion had felt going into the match. On one side, there was the up and coming American candidate. On the other, you had a key figure in the creation of the game set to make even more of a name for himself.

Of course, drawing that comparison only served to highlight the differences in this scenario. Unlike Keith, Jamaal had always dueled fairly—though he had never managed to claim the national title since he had come up short in duels against Rebecca the last two years. Also, Yako Tenma didn't have nearly the control over Industrial Illusions that his adoptive father had—only being in charge of the Russian branch of the company after taking a leave of absence for a year following Pegasus's awakening from a Shadow Realm induced coma. Speaking of the Shadow Realm, that was probably the biggest difference: this time around, there wasn't any magic being used to influence the course of events.

Jamaal took the first move, and Rebecca immediately returned her attention to the present. Drawing his first card, he activated it immediately. "I activate Terraforming, letting me grab a field spell from my deck. This will let me activate my Magical Citadel of Endymion!"

As the main tower burst from the ground behind him and the rest of the mystical city filled out the dueling field, Rebecca noted she had been right in her assessment that Jamaal would be using a new deck. Magical Citadel of Endymion was the perfect card in a deck that relied on Spell Counters, since it gained a spell counter each time a spell resolved, would stockpile the counters from any card that was destroyed, and could use its own spell counters as a cost instead of the spell counters from other cards. She had never seen him use any cards requiring spell counters before, so he must have switched his entire strategy once again.

"Now that I have my Citadel in play, I'll activate my Trade-In spell, discarding Silent Magician LV 8 in order to draw two cards." He drew his two cards, causing one of the jeweled windows on the main tower of the citadel to glow and a ring of golden energy to float around the city reminiscent of a deflector shield. Still, for all the benefit playing Trade-In provided, Rebecca wasn't sure it was the best move this early in the game. While Silent Magician LV 8 could be summoned from the deck as easily from the hand, it couldn't be summoned from the Graveyard—so Jamaal had essentially thrown away what had to have been one of his deck's strongest monsters only to draw two cards.

It must have been worth it to the young man, though, as he grinned at his new cards. However, he didn't play either of them, instead summoning a different monster. "Now, I'll summon my Alchemist of Black Spells in attack mode!" The blue-skinned spellcaster whose face was almost entirely hidden by a cloth appeared on the field and stood with his hand glowing threateningly in Yako's direction, but that didn't last long. "Lastly, I'll set one card face down and then activate my Alchemist's effect. Once per turn, I can switch him into defense position to give one other card of mine a spell counter. So, I'll give my Citadel its second counter."

Jamaal's monster switched to floating cross-legged in the air, opened up its spellbook and sent a pulse of energy towards the main tower of the citadel. Yet again, another window lit up, and this time a ring of silver energy joined the golden one in surrounding the city. With that and the appearance of his facedown card, he ended his turn. Yako drew his first card and sighed.

"It seems I'll have to allow you one more turn to take advantage of your Alchemist's effect, since he has just high enough of defense points. I'll set two cards facedown, and then summon my Gold Gadget in attack mode. Just like the Silver Gadget you saw in the first round, this lets me Special Summon a Level 4 Machine monster from my hand, so I'll add my Machine Lord Ür in defense mode."

The red and gold armored machine hovered next to the golden gear, though Yako ended his turn after that without taking any other action. Rebecca couldn't help but turn to Yugi. "You know, it's probably your fault that anybody who runs Level 4 machine monsters in their deck and needs to tribute things is running Silver and Gold Gadgets these days. You just had to show them to the world in your tag duel against Diva, didn't you?"

Yugi rolled his eyes. "Right, because they only became good cards after I used them. It's not like I go around asking people to take bits and pieces of my deck when they make their own. Are you just jealous that nobody seems to copy your deck?"

Rebecca just snorted with laughter. "Oh, that's rich. I've seen the life of the King of Games—you can keep the fame and the copycat decks. I'm quite happy with how my life is going, thank you very much."

She turned back to the duel to see that Jamaal had summoned Silent Magician LV 4 while she hadn't been paying attention. The preteen spellcaster in white and blue robes only had 1000 attack points, but just like the Silent Magician LV 0 that Yugi used she could grow in power quickly—a fact that Jamaal quickly exploited.

"Now that I have my Silent Magician on the field, I activate my Pitch Black Power Stone trap card. This gives it 3 spell counters—though I can move one of them per turn to a different card. So, I'll use that to power up my Magician." One of the three golden pyramids glowing within the black orb turned into an orb of light, which flew into the young magician's staff. While she didn't grow physically like the older card she was based off of, she did stand taller as the blue orb at the top of her staff started glowing with a faint golden aura.

Still, Jamaal wasn't done yet. "Next, I activate Spell Power Grasp. This lets me place one spell counter on my Magician while adding a second copy of the card from my deck to my hand. Of course, since it's a spell card, my Citadel gains a spell counter as well." The jewel on the bottom of the staff started glowing as well, leaving the entire staff shrouded in the golden glow. At the same time, a cyan ring joined the gold and silver rings floating around the magical city.

"Lastly, I'll switch my Alchemist into attack mode briefly so that I can use his effect and power up my Magician even further." The black robed spellcaster stood up for a few seconds before resuming his cross-legged position, sending a golden orb towards the smaller magician and lighting up the jewel on her hat. After gaining those three counters, she now stood at 2500 attack points—more than enough to take out any monster on the field.

"I could take out some of your life points by attacking your Gadget, but it since you would just be able to summon another one and then have two monsters to tribute I think I'll take a different approach. Silent Magician, destroy his Machine Lord with your Silent Burning!"

The golden aura around the magician became more intense as she cast forth a ball of golden energy that hit the floating machine and caused it to explode—although there was a curious absence of sound, as if the young spellcaster's attack had created a miniature vacuum. With the monster gone, Jamaal ended his turn, letting Yako draw his next card. This caused Silent Magician to power up once again—though since the accompanying golden glow was coming from the vicinity of her right knee Rebecca surmised she had another gem on the top of her boot that was hidden beneath her robe.

Still, if Yako was intimidated by facing a 3000-attack point monster, he didn't let it show. "I suppose I should have clarified last turn—I could have destroyed your Alchemist, but I decided to wait for an even stronger play. Now, I'll activate my trap card, The First Monarch!" The trap summoned itself as a monster, taking the form of a regal figure composed completely of shadow sitting upon a massive throne. While it was a powerful defensive monster, Yako had other plans for it.

"Since I just summoned this trap monster, I'm able to activate its effect. By discarding one card, I can change the attribute of this monster and treat it as two tributes for a monster of that attribute. So, by discarding my Forbidden Chalice, I declare my monarch as being of the Earth attribute. Then I'll sacrifice my Gold Gadget and my Monarch to make way for a true king—my Beast King Barbaros!"

The Beast-Warrior type monster was built like a cross between a sphinx and a centaur—it had the head of a lion, the torso of a muscular man, and the lower body of a black panther. It had 3000 attack points—although that was far from the biggest indicator of its strength. Its very appearance caused the heavens to rumble as a very realistic looking thundercloud formed overhead. Yako didn't seem to mind the change in weather as he taunted his opponent.

"Since my Monarch counted as two tributes, I've summoned Barbaros by tributing 3 monsters—meaning I get to use his effect to destroy every card on your field. Barbaros, Divine Wrath!" The recently formed thunderstorm dropped a continual stream of lightning bolts across both of Jamaal's monsters, while a tornado spun through and destroyed his Pitch Black Power Stone and shattering the cyan ring around his Citadel. When the storm cleared, he was left with nothing but the field spell thanks to its self-protection ability—although he didn't seem too disturbed by the loss.

"I may have lost all of my other cards, but I still have my Citadel. And since there were four counters on Silent Magician and two counters left on my Power Stone when they were destroyed, those six counters now are transferred to my spell card!" The cyan ring quickly reformed, being joined by rings of scarlet, emerald, orange, black, and pink.

Yako was not impressed. "I'm aware of your Citadel's effects, but it will take more than a light show to stop me. Your card can't protect you from my divine beast. Barbaros, attack him directly with Tornado Saber!" The Beast-Warrior channeled the wind along the length of its lance, creating a vortex that honed all of its power into the point of the weapon. It then charged across the battlefield and struck Jamaal directly, sending him skidding backwards as his life points dropped to 5000. The leonine monster then sprang back to Yako's side of the field as he ended his turn.

Jamaal straightened himself up as he drew his next card and smirked at his opponent. "Your monster might be powerful, but you'll quickly find it isn't powerful enough. I'll summon my second Silent Magician LV 4!" Another pre-teen spellcaster appeared on the field, though since it was four spell counters away from matching Barbaros in power it seemed like a poor move—until Jamaal activated his next card. "Of course, she won't be a match for your monster until she grows a little bit, so let's do that now. I'll activate my spell card, Level Up!"

The golden glow that usually slowly built up around Silent Magician as she gained spell counters flared to life so brightly that it obscured her from view for a few seconds, and when the glow faded she had grown into a woman in her late twenties. "That's better. Now, by activating Level Up!, I was able to summon Silent Magician LV 8 without needing to wait to put the counters on Silent Magician LV 4. And speaking of counters, my Citadel gets one more for activating a spell card."

A navy ring joined the multiple colors already surrounding the city, but Jamaal wasn't finished. "Still, I always find that the navy ring just doesn't look right without its partner, so I'll activate another spell. I play The Graveyard in the Fourth Dimension, which lets me shuffle one of the Silent Magician LV 4s and the Silent Magician LV 8 currently in my graveyard back into my deck!"

The entire dueling field suddenly distorted as spacetime warped, allowing the souls of the two monsters Jamaal designated to return to his deck. When the world returned to normal, a teal ring floated right below the navy ring around the Citadel, signifying the placement of the 10th spell counter. "I think that's enough stalling for now. Silent Magician, destroy his Beast King Barbaros with your Silent Burning!"

The 3500-attack point monster drew back her staff, but Yako intervened before she could launch the attack. "I activate my trap card, Interdimensional Matter Transporter! Until the End Phase of this turn, my Beast King is removed from the game!" The silvery machine sprang up around Yako's monster before it quickly disappeared, taking the monster with it. Jamaal just shook his head at the maneuver.

"Well, that was a bold move. You may have saved your monster, but it's going to cost you 3000 more life points than it would have to just let it be destroyed. I hope the next card you draw was worth that sacrifice."

Yako smiled as he responded. "Maybe. Or maybe I just can't stand to see one of my favorite monsters be destroyed when I had a card ready to save it. These cards have helped me through a rather rough time in my life, and I want to do what I can to return the favor."

This time, Jamaal nodded. "You know, I can get behind that. Silent Magician, be gentle when you attack him directly." Surprisingly, the hologram seemed to be programmed to obey that command, as the Level 8 monster calmly walked up to Yako and lightly tapped him with her staff. His life points still plummeted down to 4500, but it was by far the gentlest loss of 3500 life points that had been seen in years on the tournament stage. She returned to her side of the field to start Jamaal's Main Phase 2.

"I do admit, I'm a little worried about whatever move you might pull next turn once Barbaros is back. I think just to be safe, I'll activate my second copy of Spell Power Grasp before ending my turn." Rings of amethyst and pure white joined the spectrum of colors floating around the Citadel before Yako's transporter winked back into existence and deposited Barbaros on the field before it disappeared. Yako drew his next card, then sighed as he made his play.

"I summon my Reborn Tengu in attack mode. Then I end my turn." The beast-warrior with two swords and crow-like wings took the field, though with only 1700 attack points it didn't seem like it belonged on the field with the two monsters with 3000 or more attack. Jamaal drew his next card as he addressed Yako.

"I'm sorry, but do you really think I'll attack that? Sure, it would be nice to take out the extra life points, but I'm not going to leave Barbaros on the field just to destroy a monster that will summon another copy of itself. Silent Magician, destroy Beast King Barbaros!" This time, Yako had no means of countering the attack, so the spellcaster was able to fire her golden orb unopposed. The attack passed straight through the leonine monster as if it weren't even solid, but a second later the monster imploded, leaving only a few smoldering pieces of armor as evidence that there had been anything there at all.

"Now that your monster is gone, I'll set one card facedown and end my turn. I hope for your sake you don't draw the card you were hoping for while you still had Barbaros on the field—I know what it's like to draw the card you need one turn too late for it to be useful."

Yako drew his next card. "I wouldn't be so sure. It's very rare to be brought to the situation where you only have one card in your deck that can actually help you. We'll just see if I can recover. I set one card facedown and switch my Reborn Tengu into defense mode. That's all for me this turn."

The crow-like warrior crossed its swords and wings into a defensive stance as Jamaal drew his next card. Whatever it had been that he drew, it must not have been something he could play, as he just added it into his hand. "Well, your Tengu has a maximum of three lives, so I may as well start whittling those down. Silent Magician, attack!"

Once again, the spellcaster sent out her burning orb, and the crow-like warrior was mostly wiped from existence with only little traces of flames left. However, a second warrior arose from the ashes, as Yako was able to summon a second Reborn Tengu from his deck as soon as his first left the field. With no other moves, Jamaal ended his turn, and Yako drew his next card and started laughing.

"Remember when I said it's rare to be in a situation where only one card can help? Well, I just drew the one card that does the best job of turning this duel around for me. I banish my Gold Gadget and my Reborn Tengu from the Graveyard in order to Special Summon my Beast Machine King Barbaros Ür!"

Yako's ultimate monster appeared on the field, resembling Beast King Barbaros but having traded in the shield and lance for the cannons from his Machine Lord Ür, granting an even more powerful attack. "Now, for a 3800-attack point monster that can be Special Summoned this easily, it's only fair that there are drawbacks to using this card. Normally, you wouldn't take any battle damage for any attacks involving Barbaros Ür. However, that's only as a result of his own effect, and I happen to have a workaround. I activate my trap card, Skill Drain! It may cost 1000 life points, but it negates the effects of all monsters on the field for as long as it remains active."

Yako's life points clicked down to 3000, and golden mist started rising from all monsters on the field as Skill Drain leeched the effects off of the monsters. However, Yako wasn't finished yet. "Now, I'll summon Fusilier Dragon, the Dual Mode Beast from my hand. Thanks to its effect, I can summon it without tributes at the cost of it cutting its attack in half if summoned that way. However, since Skill Drain is active, the portion of its effect that activates on the field is negated, so it will keep its full 2800 attack points!"

Despite its name, Yako's monster was not a beast, being a Machine type tank built in the design of a dragon. Still, it was an exceptionally powerful card, and Yako was ready to use that power. "I'll switch my Reborn Tengu into attack mode. Now, Beast Machine King Barbaros Ür, destroy his Silent Magician with your Crag Shot!" The strongest Beast-Warrior in the game unleashed a salvo of molten lead from its two cannons, destroying Jamaal's Silent Magician and knocking his life points down to 4700.

"Reborn Tengu, attack directly with Corvian Katana!" The avian warrior leapt into the air and came down with both of his swords slashing across Jamaal in an X-shaped pattern, knocking him down to 3000 life points. Yako paused for a few seconds to let Jamaal recover before he continued. "Lastly, Fusilier Dragon, attack directly with Photon Fusillade!" The machine monster unleashed a rapid-fire burst of lasers from each of its four cannons, bringing Jamaal all the way down to 200 life points. With that, Yako ended his turn, giving Jamaal time to catch his breath before he drew his next card.

"Remember how you said there's often more than one card you can draw that will help I a given situation? Well, I'd much rather take that than what I'm currently facing. I'm going to need more than one card to turn this around. So, let's just see what I can draw." He drew his card and smiled. "Well, certainly a promising start. I activate Trade-In, discarding my second Silent Magician LV 8 to draw two cards." As he drew, the thirteenth ring appeared around the Magical Citadel, though this time the ring wasn't one solid color and instead was a shimmering rainbow of colors.

Seeing his new cards, Jamaal's face lit up. "Well, talk about a perfect draw. I remove six spell counters from my Citadel in order to Special Summon Endymion, the Master Magician from my hand!" The bottom six counters faded from existence as his monster took the field, letting the 2700 attack point monster in black armor with a purple cape face off against Yako's three monsters.

"Of course, what's really helpful about Endymion is his effect, which I can't use at the moment because of Skill Drain. Still, my facedown card will take care of that. I sacrifice Endymion in order to activate Tyrant's Temper!" The magician faded away to allow the imperial trap card to activate. "With this active, none of my monsters are affected by any other trap cards. Now, since I still have more than six counters on my Citadel, I can remove them to Special Summon Endymion back from the Graveyard!"

The regal magician reappeared, this time without the golden mist being sucked out of him by Skill Drain. "Since Endymion was just summoned by his effect, I get to recycle one spell card from my Graveyard—and I choose Level Up! Just in time for me to Normal Summon my Silent Magician LV 4, and then level her up to summon my third Silent Magician LV 8!"

The young magician briefly appeared on the battlefield before it was covered by a flare of gold and silver light—gold for the spellcaster's transformation, and silver for the reappearance of the silver ring around the Citadel. When the light faded, the Silent Magician now matched the age of Endymion, with the benefit of 800 extra attack points and an immunity to spell effects.

"Of course, even with both of these monsters, I'd still lose if you attacked me with Barbaros Ür. Luckily, I can use Endymion's second effect. I discard my Spell Power Grasp in order to destroy your Beast Machine King!" The magician thrust his staff into the earth, and golden threads of energy arced around the ground towards Yako's beast. They lashed around the monster and prevented it from making any movements for a few seconds—and those few seconds were all it took for a line of roses to bloom along the energy thread, ripping the monster to pieces with their thorns. Yako clutched at his chest for a brief second as his eyes glazed over, but he quickly recovered.

With Yako's strongest monster now destroyed, Jamaal entered his Battle Phase. "Silent Magician, burn away his Dual-Mode Beast!" The Silent Burning attack proved just as devastating against the tank as it had against any of Yako's other monsters, destroying it and bringing him down to 2300 life points. "Now, Endymion, destroy Reborn Tengu with your Golden Crystal Bomber!" Instead of bothering with the roses, this time Jamaal's magician simply blasted the crow man directly with the golden energy, dissolving it into ash and taking away 1000 of Yako's life points. However, once again the crow reformed as Yako summoned the third copy from his deck.

"It's a good thing Skill Drain only negates my monster effects on the field. Since my Tengu's effect activates after he leaves the field, I'm still able to use it." Jamaal acknowledged Yako's statement with a nod. "Well, that's all I can do. Guess it all comes down to this—if you draw another copy of either form of Barbaros, you win. Draw something that can't stop my attack next turn, and you lose."

Yako nodded as he drew his card. "Well, looks like we fall into the nebulous third option. I'll set this monster in defense position and end my turn. So now it all comes down to if you draw a monster you can summon." Jamaal smiled as he drew his next card.

"It's been a lot of fun dueling you, but I'm afraid it's time for this to end. I summon Breaker, the Magical Warrior!" The red-armored knight appeared on the field, and his sword started glowing with blue energy as his summon gave him a spell counter and 1900 attack—although his original 1600 had been more than enough. "Endymion, destroy his Reborn Tengu!" Once again, the golden burst of light vaporized the crow warrior, though this time it wasn't able to revive from the ashes. "Silent Magician, destroy his face-down monster!"

If Jamaal had been worried about the monster having too many defense points to attack with any other monster, those worries proved unfounded when the monster was revealed to be Gene-Warped Warwolf, a normal monster with only 100 defense. It collapsed into nothing in the wake of the magician's Silent Burning, leaving Yako wide open. "Now, Breaker, finish this duel with your Mana Break!" The Level 4 spellcaster charged forward and slashed across Yako, taking away the remainder of his life points.

The crowd cheered as the announcer called out, "And the winner of this duel is Jamaal Williams! Now, would Joey Wheeler and Mai Valentine please report to the dueling field?"


	4. Chapter 4

"Well, Mai, I admit you've got me in a tight spot. I didn't think anybody but Yugi would be able to get out his Dark Magician and Dark Magician Girl this easily, and here I am with only 4400 life points. Still, that isn't going to keep me down, because now I activate Hyper Refresh! Since I have no monsters and fewer life points than the combined attacks of your monsters, I get to double my life points!"

Mai just chuckled. "I don't know why I would be surprised—you're always able to pull yourself out of a scrape. It's almost like I should have expected that—oh wait, I did. Sorry hon, but you just fell right into my trap. Mystical Refpanel lets me take the effect of your spell card and direct it at any target I choose—so I'll be doubling _my_ life points instead."

Joey couldn't help but groan at the turn of events. Of course Mai would have the perfect trap in place for him. Even when Yugi built a deck more for show than actual competition, it seemed destiny just didn't want the deck to lose. It didn't help that his own deck had been more distant with him than usual, which Joey knew reflected more on his own actions than anything else. Though he liked to keep his old deck as a reminder of his climb from perpetual underdog to one of the best in the world, he hadn't used it in a duel for far too long. He had always resented when people viewed him as a talentless nobody in the shadows of Yugi and Kaiba, and now his deck was probably venting some of its own frustration at being replaced on him.

Still, he was confident he'd find a way to turn this around. Or at least he was, until Rebecca suddenly leaned over the table interrupting the duel. "Well, it looks like you two didn't hear the announcement—Jamaal just beat Yako, so now it's your turn to get up on stage. Better not keep the crowd waiting just to finish a little friendly duel."

Hearing this, both duelists started gathering their cards—or more accurately, Joey gathered his cards while Mai gathered Yugi's. As she handed the deck back to its owner, she couldn't help but throw another barb at Joey.

"Well, looks like we ran out of time on our duel. By some measures that's inconclusive, but in the European circuit we play where if a duel hits the time limit and a player has a clear advantage, it counts as a win for them. Since I had 6800 life points and two powerful monsters to your 4400 and blank field, by those rules I just beat you."

Joey smirked back at her. "I'm not so sure you want to claim that. I tend to go on a massive comeback campaign after losing duels—why do you think I enjoyed dueling Kaiba so much? Sure, he beat me every time, but I always ended up getting so much better afterwards. By beating me here, you might just have guaranteed my victory in the tournament."

Mai just rolled her eyes as she handed Yugi's deck back to him. "Well, looks like you're certainly doing a good job of keeping Kaiba's spirit at this tournament. Keep this up and your ego might just fill the room."

Joey sadly shook his head. "If my ego is only filling the room, I've got quite a way to go until I catch up to Kaiba. Though if you feel the need to take me down a few pegs, you're more than welcome to try up on stage."

The two started walking away, though the stream of banter continued. "Better be careful what you wish for—my Harpie cards are based off of Greek mythology. If there's one thing the Greeks loved in their stories, it was punishing men for their hubris."

"Yeah, but in the original stories all the Harpies were good for were stealing food from a blind old man. Not exactly the kind of thing that's threatening."

Mai let out a mock whistle. "Wow, you actually looked up some Greek mythology. I'm impressed. What happened to that lovable loser who looked like he had better than even odds of dropping out of high school?"

A wistful look crossed Joey's eyes. "Everybody's got to grow up sometime. I found myself needing some new hobbies once dueling became my job—and of course, it's not like the 'saving the world' business was keeping me busy at that point. Figured I liked the stories of the cards so much I may as well learn more about their origins."

Mai just shook her head as she pressed the call button for the elevator. "So, Joey Wheeler is growing up. Never thought the day would come." Joey glanced behind him, and judging himself to have enough privacy to actually discuss this now switched to a more serious topic.

"Going back to what you said earlier, Mai, you did beat me in that duel back there. As you can tell, I still have my soul. I just want you to remember this as our last duel before we get on stage. I promise, no matter what happens up there, we'll both be fine when this is over."

Mai just took a few deep breaths. "Thanks for that, but we'll see how well that works for me when we've got holograms instead of just pieces of paper. That's the one problem with how much the game has taken off—it's gotten to the point where it's too hard to tell when the monsters aren't real."

Any follow-up observation was put on hold as the elevator opened and Yako stepped out. The businessman was pinching the bridge of his nose as if he was fighting a headache, though he stopped when he noticed the two duelists waiting to hop in the elevator and stepped out with just a nod of acknowledgement.

Joey pressed the button to go up to the stadium floor. "Guess the American wanted to stay up top to get a front row seat to our duel if he wasn't coming down then. Still, going back to what you were saying earlier, it has gotten a bit hard to tell when Duel Monsters isn't just a game. So, how about we make it a bit more apparent? What do you say to a friendly little wager—whoever loses this duel has to buy dinner tonight."

Mai rolled her eyes. "I'll only allow this because I know you're actually being friendly and aren't just trying to get me out on a date. Although, if you were, that would make this the thirtieth time a guy tried that approach with me since I started keeping track… oh well. It might actually be fun this way. How about we set some ground rules: it has to be higher end than just fast food, but we also should keep it below black-tie level since I really didn't bring anything formal to wear on this trip."

Joey just snorted. "Please, now that I'm not an unemployed high school student I find I don't consider getting fast food as going out to dinner. And as for dress codes, I'm pretty sure your standard dueling attire is much more formal than mine, so we're good to go."

The elevator dinged to signal their arrival at the stadium. With the welcoming roar of the crowd, both duelists found themselves leaving their previous discussion behind. No matter how friendly they were, each was a true duelist, and that always meant that once the first cards were drawn, they would put everything they had into the game.

Yugi leaned back into his chair and turned to Rebecca before Joey and Mai's duel could start. "You know, I'm really not sure how to feel about the rest of the duels in this tournament. With your duel and Mokuba's, it was easy to know who to root for. Then with the last duel I didn't have any investment in the duelists so I could just enjoy the game as it went. From here on out though, most of these duels are going to end with one of my friends losing."

Rebecca just rolled her eyes. "Saying things like that just makes it really obvious how little you've been following the game. You've been the world champion for what, four years now? You'd think you'd be used to—"

Rebecca cut herself off when Yugi glanced over her shoulder and suddenly looked as if he was seeing a ghost. She turned around to see what might have caused this, but the only thing she could see was Yako walking back into the room.

"Okay, would you mind clarifying what you are seeing? I get that something in the past between you and Yako still makes you uncomfortable, but you weren't freaking out this much before or during his duel. Something's here, and I'd like to know what I'm getting into."

Yugi lowered his voice. "It might be nothing, but Yako isn't alone. Beast Machine King Barbaros Ür is with him." Rebecca wordlessly gestured for him to continue. She had long gotten used to the fact that Yugi was able to see Duel Monster spirits and had been ever since the game first came to Japan. Of course, the one thing that wasn't clear was if this was something was an aftereffect of sharing his body with the spirit of the Pharaoh or if, like Rafael, Yugi just always had that ability. However, just seeing a spirit shouldn't have caused this much panic, so more must have been happening here.

Yugi continued his explanation. "There's some sort of golden collar around its neck, and it looks like it's struggling to rip it off. Maybe I'm just getting some weird aftereffects from my duel with Mokuba, but I've never seen anything affect a monster spirit like outside of a magic effect that makes the spirits real. The spirit wasn't even this visible when Yako was getting ready to duel which is usually when they are easiest to make out, so why is it as clear as day now?"

Rebecca frowned at this. "I wasn't able to find anything on any of the participants that hinted at any sort of magic, and while Jamaal is the most likely candidate since he just dueled Yako I've dueled him twice and nothing bad has happened to me. Do you see anything like that on my monster spirits?"

Yugi shook his head. "I can't tell at the moment—I'm not able to see any of them. Can you try calling out to them?" Rebecca closed her eyes and started shuffling through her deck blindly. While she was nowhere near as comfortable around magic as Yugi was, she at least knew the best way for her to reach out to her monsters. After thirty seconds, Yugi interrupted her musings.

"Okay, none of your monsters have anything they shouldn't have. Everything seems fine on that end." Rebecca just nodded.

"That's a relief, but it still doesn't mean anything about this current situation. I'll look into this a lot more once the tournament is over. If there's anything we could get advanced warning for, that would be great to have. I'll have to get the records of the audience as well—we can't rule out that someone in the audience was interfering in the duel targeting Yako specifically."

Yugi nodded. "I'll keep an eye out for anything else weird going on. I really hope this is nothing, but I can't really ignore something like this. Why can't things ever just be normal at a tournament hosted by KaibaCorp?"

Rebecca just sighed. "Hey, look on the bright side—at least things are never boring, and this time if there is anything going on it looks like we have some advanced warning. Still, we can't take any action now, so why don't you just keep an eye out throughout the tournament and we'll warn Yako afterwards. May as well get as much info as possible before we involve anyone outside of the usual crowd."

Yugi's eyes took on a determined glare as he agreed with Rebecca's plan. Unfortunately, Duel Monster spirits were never visible through a camera, so he wouldn't be able to keep an eye on Mai and Joey's spirits to see if anything strange happened to them. He'd have to go up to the stadium floor to keep an eye on future duels, but since Mai had just drawn her first card he wouldn't be able to go up there now without interrupting the tournament.

As was typical for one of Mai's duels, she opened up with a Harpie card—but this was a card Yugi hadn't seen her use before. "Okay, Joey, I'll start by summoning my Harpie Channeler in attack mode. With her effect, I can discard one Harpie card in order to summon one Harpie monster from my deck in defense position, so I'll discard my Harpie Harpist in order to summon my Harpie's Pet Dragon!"

The black-feathered Harpie appeared on the field and struck the ground next to her with her staff, summoning a pillar of fire from which the familiar chained dragon appeared with its wings crossed in front of itself. It was a move that was fairly easy to follow, yet for some reason Joey looked confused.

"Okay, I get why there would be a monster that would summon any Harpie monster from the deck. I also get why your Channeler would have an effect so its name would be treated as Harpie Lady, seeing as that works so well with most of your cards and gives your Dragon the 300-point boost. But why does your Channeler become a Level 7 monster when there's a dragon on the field? It's not like there are any Harpie ritual monsters, right?"

Mai just shrugged her shoulders. "Honestly, I have no clue either. Still, this card was released in the same pack that introduced that new summoning method last month, so maybe they are planning to release a Harpie Synchro Monster in the near future."

Unknown to Mai, her sentence had a profound effect on Yugi. Hearing it, he came down with a splitting headache, and as he shut his eyes he heard a new sequence of voices in his head.

" _I summon forth the Synchro Monster, Junk Gardna!"_

 _"Synchro what?"_

Yugi started getting images to go along with this brief flash of conversation, but everything just served to make him more confused. The first voice he had heard belonged to someone he had never seen before—a young man with black and yellow hair who had summoned the Synchro Monster in question. However, the second voice clearly belonged to Atem, which made the whole situation impossible.

Yugi tried to keep analyzing the vision, only getting more confused. Apparently, the situation he was seeing was a four-person duel, but unlike any duel he had ever participated this seemed to be a three on one duel. There was some form of magical effect or field spell in play, since the duel was taking place in a purple atmosphere with twinkling stars surrounding them. On his opponent's field was what looked like a variant of Mokuba's Cyber End Dragon, but what drew Yugi's attention more were the other two duelists on his side of the field.

The man who had summoned the green monster Yugi assumed was Junk Gardna had what appeared to be a golden tattoo down the left side of his face, and he was using a duel disk that looked to be a custom variant of the typical Battle City era duel disk. The other duelist looked to be a couple of years younger and was wearing a red jacket—but to add to the impossibility he was using a duel disk that more resembled the current model, which again had been invented after Atem had returned to the afterlife.

Staring more closely at the brown-haired duelist, Yugi's vision once again started swimming, until he flashed to a different scene—this time in a solo duel between himself and the young man in the red jacket surrounded by a rainbow-colored world.

 _"Yugi, this duel is mine!"_

 _"Is that so?"_

 _"Partner, will you leave the rest to me? His strength is appealing to my duelist's soul so I want to test it out."_

 _"Okay, I'll leave it to you, Other Me."_

 _"Here I go, Jaden! I activate Dark Renewal! The moment the opponent summons a monster, I sacrifice that monster along with my own monster to revive a Spellcaster-type monster from my Graveyard! I sacrifice your Neo-Spacian Grand Mole along with Dark Magician Girl to revive a monster in my Graveyard!"_

 _"It couldn't be… Dark Magician?!"_

 _"No. I will now activate the effect of Code Change within my Mystical Refpanel! This card allows me to change the card text on a card to any type I wish."_

 _"It couldn't be… the card you sent then...!"_

 _"Right! The one I'm reviving is not a Spellcaster. It's a Divine Beast! Now show yourself, Slifer the Sky Dragon!"_

The appearance of the Egyptian God brought Yugi crashing back to the present, where he started panting and grabbed onto Rebecca's shoulder for support. "There's definitely something strange happening here. I just had a couple of visions that felt like memories, but they can't possibly have actually happened." Rebecca's eyes widened. Considering everything that had happened to Yugi over the past five years, having him say something was impossible was the last thing she expected to hear.

"Okay, it has to be big if you are saying that. What's going on?"

"When Mai said Synchro Monster, I started seeing another duel where I—or more accurately, Atem—was tag dueling with on a team with two other people against a single opponent. One of our teammates managed to summon a Synchro Monster in that duel, but that couldn't happen—Atem is in the afterlife for good now, so how could he interact with a duelist using cards that wouldn't be invented for more than a year after he went away? And why would I not remember such a strange duel?"

Rebecca opened her mouth to respond, but Yugi cut her off. "To make matters worse, the other teammate I was dueling with made me switch to the memory of a different duel, this time me against that teammate. And when I say me, I mean me—although I did switch with Atem towards the end of the duel and summoned Slifer. I only ever used an Egyptian God if the fate of the world depended on it—or if I was dueling Kaiba who proved to be able to control that kind of power on his own—so why would I use Slifer in what must have been a friendly duel if Atem was willing to take the back seat? Worst of all, my opponent used Neo-Spacian Grand Mole in that duel."

Rebecca quickly cut in. "Yugi, you need to calm down. I understand why you are freaking out right now, but getting this stressed out won't help anything. Take a few deep breaths." After he did so, Rebecca continued. "Okay, now can you explain why this card I never heard of is worse than Synchro Monsters at an impossible time or an unexplained summoning of a god?"

The little break seemed to give Yugi the time he needed to gather himself, as he was much more in control when he continued. "Right, sorry. Neo-Spacian Grand Mole is a card that was created as part of a Kaiba Corporation promotion a few months back—there's only one of that card in the whole world. Actually, that's not even right, since there isn't a card like that in the world—the promotion let the winner design cards that would be launched into space. The only copy of Neo-Spacian Grand Mole in existence is floating in a satellite that's not even within Earth's orbit at this point."

Of course, while Mai's casual description of her monster effect had triggered this revelation in Yugi, she had no way of knowing that. While Yugi was just starting to have his visions following the summoning of her Harpie's Pet Dragon, she calmly continued with her turn.

"Next, I activate my Hysteric Sign spell card. This handy continuous spell will let me add Elegant Egotist to my hand, and starting next turn if it gets destroyed I'll be able to add three different Harpie Cards to my hand as well."

The glowing purple circle appeared behind her two monsters, though for a horrible second Mai saw it change slightly into an unfortunately familiar green circle before she shook her head and it returned to its usual shape. She added her Elegant Egotist to her hand alongside her Harpie Queen, Harpie Dancer, and Triangle Ecstasy Spark.

"Now, I'll move to my End Phase. Since Harpie Harpist was sent to the Graveyard this turn, I can add one Level 4 Winged Beast monster with 1500 or less attack to my hand." Taking her Harpie Lady 1, she steeled herself for what was to come on Joey's turn. Since her Channeler had only 1400 attack points, she knew she was leaving herself open for damage—but she wanted to save the moves that would lessen that blow to surprise Joey on her next turn when she would be able to counterattack.

Joey just chuckled. "I really hope you aren't holding back against me for old time's sake, Mai. I'm not a newbie who gets by with luck anymore, and my Red-Eyes can pull off just as many combos as your Harpies can. First, I activate my spell card, Cards of the Red Stone! By discarding my Red-Eyes Black Flare Dragon, I get to draw two more cards." The Red-Eyes with flaming wings briefly appeared on the field before it curled up and changed into a red gem that burst open to add two cards to Joey's hand.

"Next, I activate my Red-Eyes Insight! I'll send my Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon from my deck to the Graveyard in order to add one Red-Eyes spell or trap from my deck to my hand." A ghostly version of the metallic dragon floated on the field briefly as well before its eyes glowed crimson, and Joey added another card from his deck to his hand.

"That seems like enough resource gathering for now. So, I'll summon the Black Stone of Legend! It may be just an egg now, but I can tribute it to Special Summon a Level 7 or lower Red-Eyes monster from my deck. So, I sacrifice my Stone in order to Special Summon my second copy of Red-Eyes Black Flare Dragon!" The dragon appeared in the field in the opposite manner of Joey's previous play—instead of a full-grown dragon turning into an egg, this time the egg burst into the flaming dragon.

"Now, Red-Eyes Black Flare Dragon, destroy her Harpie Channeler! Inferno Flare Blast!" The dragon reared back its head and launched a ball of orange plasma at the avian monster, incinerating her and taking out 1000 of Mai's life points. In addition to taking the lead, he also just drove down Harpie's Pet Dragon back to its original stats since there was no longer a monster treated as Harpie Lady on the field.

"Well, normally I'd say that's enough for one turn, but knowing you, you've got a combo ready to turn this back around, so I think it would be best for me to be prepared. With that in mind, I'm going to set these three cards face-down before ending my turn." Mai just smirked as she drew her next card—Harpie's Feather Storm. While it didn't contribute anything to the current situation, it would be a handy defense for the next turn.

"Don't count on your facedown cards to save you—I've already got everything I need to get rid of them and your monster. First, I discard my Harpie Queen. It hurts to see her go, but when the queen falls, her kingdom rises to replace her. In exchange for sending her to the graveyard, I get to add Harpies' Hunting Ground from my deck to my hand. I think I'll activate it right now."

Mountains sprang up around the outside of the dueling area, although Mai and Joey were dueling along a flat stretch of wasteland with a light breeze swirling through it. "This card gives every Winged Beast type monster an additional 200 attack and defense points—but more importantly, whenever a Harpie Lady or Harpie Lady Sisters are summoned, the summoner gets to destroy one spell or trap card on the field. So, I think I'll start this off by summoning my Harpie Dancer in attack position."

A piercing screech from behind him was Joey's only warning before the blonde Harpie with white wings appeared claw-first on his trap zone, impaling one of his set cards. The dancer then returned to Mai's side of the field, but Joey couldn't help smirking. "Quite the entrance your monster made there, but you're going to regret destroying that card. When Return of the Red-Eyes goes to the graveyard, I get to Special Summon any Red-Eyes monster in my graveyard! Say hello to Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon!"

The remains of Joey's trap card became a portal of darkness, through which the metallic dragon's spirit came roaring back from the graveyard before it fully materialized. However, Mai wasn't deterred. "I wouldn't get comfortable with your dragon for long—it might be one of the best Red-Eyes monsters out there, but you won't get a chance to use its effect since you can only summon a dragon on your turn. I activate Elegant Egotist to Special Summon Harpie Lady Sisters from my deck!"

This time there was an oddly melodic convergence of screeches as the three Harpies crashed down on Joey's side of the field, shattering another trap card that turned out to be Red-Eyes Fang with Chain. They then took their place in one of Mai's monster card zones, where her field spell boosted them to 2150 attack.

Joey sighed in relief. "You know, I'm glad they changed the ruling where one copy of Harpie Lady Sisters could be counted as three copies of Harpie Lady. In the old days, your Harpie's Pet Dragon would have 3200 attack at this point, but she's still stuck at 2300 and none of your monsters can stand up to mine." Mai just rolled her eyes in response.

"Sure, some of the cards in my deck are a lot weaker now than they used to be, but you should know better than to underestimate me. I activate the spell card, Triangle Ecstasy Spark! For the rest of this turn, every copy of Harpie Lady Sisters on the field has their attack become 2700—and as an added bonus, you won't be able to activate any trap cards for the rest of this turn!"

"That won't stop me if I chain my trap card to your spell's activation! I activate Red-Eyes Spirit in order to bring my other copy of Red-Eyes Black Flare Dragon back from the graveyard in attack position!" The second dragon roared back to life just before the three Harpies could assume their triangular formation and render Joey's traps useless—which was now a moot point since Joey had no spells or traps on the field.

"Okay, so now your Harpie Sisters can take out one of my Flare Dragons, but the other is stronger than anything else you have on the field and nothing you have can touch my Darkness Metal Dragon, so I'll just be able to revive the dragon you destroy instantly. What exactly was the point of activating that card then?"

Mai shot Joey a wicked smirk. "What makes you think my combo is finished? I activate the effect of Harpie Dancer. By returning one Wind monster on my field to my hand, I get to Normal Summon another Wind monster this turn. So, I'll return my Harpie Dancer to my hand in order to summon Harpie Lady 1!" This time, the monster screeched down onto Mai's side of the field as she destroyed her own Hysteric Sign, although this was an afterthought compared to her new monster's effect. While it almost exactly matched the original Harpie Lady in appearance, this version had an effect that caused the wind to pick up and blow into Joey's face.

"This latest Harpie grants every Wind attribute monster an additional 300 attack- meaning my Harpie Lady 1 has 1800 attack, my Harpie's Pet Dragon has 2600, and my Harpie Lady Sisters have 3000. Now, I switch my Harpie's Pet Dragon to attack mode and move to my Battle Phase. Harpie Lady Sisters, destroy his Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon with your Triangle Ecstasy Spark!"

The triangle of energy that had been connecting the sisters since Mai's spell card resolved lanced out with bolts of red, yellow, and blue lightning that blasted the metallic dragon to pieces and dropped Joey's life points to 7800. "Now, Harpie's Pet Dragon, attack one of his Flare Dragons! Giga Saint Fire!" The dragon roared back as a ball of fire formed in its mouth, which it then released in a stream that arced downwards before curving back up to hit Joey's Flare Dragon. On impact, the stream of fire exploded into a ball that completely contained the dragon, and even though its body was on fire the sheer heat and duration of the attack eventually burned away Joey's monster and 200 more of his life points.

"Unfortunately, that's all I'll be able to do this Battle Phase, and while I'll be skipping Main Phase 2 there's plenty that will be happening at my End Phase. First, Triangle Ecstasy Spark's effect wears off, so my Harpie Lady Sisters drop down to 2450 attack. Second, since Hysteric Sign went to the graveyard this turn, I get to add three Harpie cards with different names from my deck to my hand."

Mai searched through her deck for the three cards she needed. Considering all of the boosts her Harpie Lady 1 provided to her field, Joey obviously wouldn't leave that monster around until her next turn—which just meant she should add her second copy so she could summon it back on her next turn. The second card was also an obvious choice, just based on how powerful Harpie Lady Phoenix formation was. The third card was harder to pick, but she decided to add her second copy of Harpie's Feather Storm. She was more likely to draw a card that would let her swarm the field with Harpies in her Draw Phase, so she went with the card that would protect her life points from Red-Eyes Black Flare Dragon's effect if Joey chose to apply it.

Once she finished adding her cards to her hand, Joey took his turn. "I'll set this one card face down, and then activate Red-Eyes Fusion! I may not be able to summon any other monsters this turn, but that's a small price to pay. I'll send my Red-Eyes Black Dragon and my Summoned Skull from my Deck to my Graveyard in order to Fusion Summon my Archfiend Black Skull Dragon!"

Joey's newest monster was a titanic presence, composed of red flesh only sparsely hidden by what looked like pieces of the component monsters of the fusion. Fire erupted from the back of the undead dragon as it roared out its challenge, and Mai knew its 3200 attack points were really the least threatening aspect of this dragon, forcing her to defend herself.

"I activate my trap card, Harpie's Feather Storm! For the rest of this turn, you aren't able to activate any monster effects!"

"What, trap card? You can't just activate a trap directly from your…hand…" Joey trailed off as he read through Mai's card effect and saw she actually could activate this trap directly from her hand so long as she had a monster on the field whose name was treated as Harpie Lady. "Okay, I guess it's only fair that you got such a powerful card considering they banned Feather Duster and Sparrow Formation while severely nerfing Phoenix Formation's effect. Still, my dragon keeps its effect that prevents you from activating effects until the Damage Step is over, and it still has more attack than any of your monsters. Archfiend Black Skull Dragon, destroy Harpie Lady 1 with Demonic Inferno!"

The fused dragon formed a meteor of flaming obsidian in its mouth before firing it at Mai's monster—and then immediately following it with two others. The three impacts obliterated the Winged Beast and ripped through 1400 of Mai's life points—although the drop she knew was more important were the drops to her other monsters' attack points. Without Harpie Lady 1's effect, her Harpie Lady Sisters and Harpie's Pet Dragon both dropped below 2400 attack points—meaning Joey's Red-Eyes Black Flare Dragon was now the strongest monster on the field.

"Now, the only question is which of your monsters do I want to destroy next. Your Harpie Lady Sisters could be a problem if you have another copy of Triangle Ecstasy Spark, but your Dragon will be problematic if you can get two Harpies—or just a single copy of Harpie Lady 1—on the field. Considering Triangle Ecstasy Spark isn't technically a Harpie card and you just added three Harpie cards to your hand, I'm going to say the dragon is a bigger threat. Red-Eyes Black Flare Dragon, attack Harpie's Pet Dragon with Inferno Flare Blast!"

Almost as if the dragon was trying to get revenge for its fallen twin, instead of immediately launching the bolt of plasma the Red-Eyes monster charged it to massive size, so that when it did fire the attack it exploded into a star that completely encased Mai's dragon and burned it away. Mai's life points clicked down to 5200 as a result of the attack, though thankfully that was the last of it as Joey ended his turn. She drew her next card, and only her years of professional dueling helped her keep her face impassive. She had just drawn Hysteric Party, which combined with her Phoenix Formation would let her wipe Joey's entire field clean. The only downside was she would need to wait a turn—but she had just enough that she should be able to survive that without issues.

"I'll set one monster in defense mode, and then set two cards face down. Then, I switch my Harpie Lady Sisters to defense mode as well and end my turn." In truth, it was a bit of a gamble setting her Harpie Lady 1 instead of summoning it—had she summoned it in attack mode, her Harpie Lady Sisters would have 2450 attack and be able to destroy Joey's Flare Dragon. However, that would leave both of her monsters in attack mode, and knowing Joey's deck he'd be able to easily make use of such an opening even if she deprived him of one of his monsters. The name of the game was surviving until next turn—so she would just have to have faith that her defenses would last.

Joey seemed a bit surprised as he drew his next card. "You know, I fully expected you to summon a Harpie monster and destroy my facedown card. Guess I'll just have to activate it myself. I activate my second copy of Return of the Red-Eyes! Now, when I activate its effect without it being destroyed, I can't revive any Red-Eyes monster I like, but if I control a Red-Eyes I can revive any normal monster I like. Now, since Red-Eyes Black Flare Dragon is a Gemini monster that's treated as a normal monster when it's in the Graveyard, I'm able to revive it with this effect!"

The second Flare Dragon appeared on the field, but Joey didn't keep the two identical dragons for long. "Now, as a Gemini monster, I can give one of my Flare Dragons its effect to inflict 2400 points of burn damage at the end of the Battle Phase by using up my Normal Summon for this turn. I'm going to do that to turn one of my dragons into an effect monster!" The newly summoned dragon lit its entire body on fire, though unlike the multiple dragon battles that occurred earlier this time the fire was harmless—at least to the dragon. Mai had no doubt it would be less agreeable to her, but luckily she wouldn't have to worry about it this turn.

"That would be a problem, if I didn't have another Harpie's Feather Storm! Sorry, but you'll have to wait another turn before either of your dragons will be able to hit my life points with their effects." Joey just groaned.

"You know, I'm starting to really hate that trap card. Still, don't think your life points are safe. I have three attacks and you only have two monsters to protect yourself. Red-Eyes Black Flare Dragons, destroy both of her monsters!" Each of the dragons charged their attacks in sequence, with the effect monster frying Harpie Lady Sisters while the normal version destroyed the face-down Harpie Lady 1.

Mai now found herself facing a difficult choice—did she activate her Hysteric Party Trap now, or save it for her turn? If she didn't activate it now, she knew she would be down to 2000 life points once Joey's Archfiend attacked. If she activated it now, though, she would be giving up the boost from one of her Harpies—and since she wouldn't be able to attack next turn, he'd actually be able to get rid of both of her Harpie Lady 1s before she would be able to attack. Since her Harpies were individually weak, this would leave her open in the long run—so she knew she'd have to risk the damage to have a chance to win the duel.

She barely had time to make her decision before Joey took the option away from her. "Archfiend Black Skull Dragon, attack her directly!" At this point, even if she had wanted to it was too late to activate her trap—her Feather Storm only prevented monsters from activating their effects, but Joey's dragon had a permanent effect to prevent the activation of cards in response to its attacks. Mai just braced herself as the flaming hunk of obsidian took away over half of her life points. Sitting at a 5600-point deficit certainly made it look like she was about to lose the duel, but that would just make her move next turn even more impressive to the audience.

"Well, that's all for me. Better make your next move count, though. I'd hate for our duel to end this early, and you can't keep pulling out that trap card every single turn." Mai just smirked as she drew her next card. Quill Pen of Guldos wasn't really too helpful in the current situation, but she had everything she needed.

"You sound like you've been disappointed with our duel so far. I admit, I haven't been able to put my best foot forward yet. Still, I think it's about time to invite in some more ladies to liven up this party. I discard Harpie Dancer from my hand in order to activate my trap card, Hysteric Party! With this, I can summon as many Harpie Ladies as possible from my graveyard—so say hello to both of my Harpie Lady 1s, my Harpie Queen, my Harpie Channeler, and my Harpie Harpist!"

Since all five monsters treated as Harpie Lady were summoned at once, the effect of Harpie's Hunting Ground only activated once—which led to the spectacle of all five monsters trying to crowd the landing on top of Joey's activated Return of the Red-Eyes. Joey just blinked in surprised.

"Okay, you're being oddly generous here, Mai. Sure, you just summoned five monsters at once and they all get a combined 800 attack point boost between your Hunting Ground and both of your Harpie Lady 1s, but by destroying Return of the Red-Eyes you just let me summon Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon again, and none of your monsters have enough attack to beat him or my Archfiend."

Mai rolled her eyes. "Do you honestly believe I'd forgotten the effect of your card? It just doesn't matter. Whether you have three dragons on your field or four, they are all going to be destroyed anyway. I activate my Harpie Lady Phoenix Formation! Since I have five Harpies, I can destroy up to five of your monsters and inflict damage to your life points equal to the highest attack point value among them!"

As her five Harpie Ladies drew into the formation and created the blazing phoenix, Mai briefly mused that if she was using the pre-errata version that dealt damage equal to the total attack points of the destroyed monsters, she would be dealing more than 8000 points of damage with this move. Still, as her monsters tore through Joey's field before colliding with the duelist herself, Mai found herself holding her breath as Joey stumbled back. For a horrible instant, the scene switched from a stadium in broad daylight to a San Francisco parking lot at night. Then, Joey caught himself and his life points stopped falling at 4400. With that, Mai was able to push the old memory aside.

Her relief quickly turned to surprise when a large blue machine with a giant clock on its face appeared on the field. The doors to the contraption sprang open to bring three Red-Eyes onto the field—both of Joey's Flare Dragons in their normal monster state, as well as a smaller Red-Eyes that appeared to be more mechanical in nature, judging from the red metal plating and cogs sticking out of places on its body.

"Sorry, Mai, but you won't be getting rid of my dragons that easily. Whenever one or more of my Level 7 or lower Red-Eyes monsters is destroyed, I can Special Summon Red-Eyes Retro Dragon from my hand and bring back all of those monsters. I might not be able to save my Archfiend Black Skull Dragon or my Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon with this, but my Flare Dragons are sticking around."

Mai sighed. With only Quill Pen of Guldos in her hand, she wouldn't be able to get rid of both of Joey's Flare Dragons this turn, which meant he would get to resolve one of their effects next turn and do 2400 points of damage—which would put her out of the duel. Still, even though she was going to lose, she could at least leave something for the audience to remember.

"It's still my turn, so I activate my Quill Pen of Guldos! By shuffling my Harpie Lady Sisters and my Harpie Dancer from my Graveyard back into my deck, I can return one monster on the field to its owner's hand—so I choose my Harpie Harpist!" The giant feather appeared on the field and pushed her Harpist off of the field and back to her hand. "Now, I can use the effect of Harpie's Channeler to discard my Harpie Harpist and summon Harpie's Pet Baby Dragon from my deck!"

Once again, the channeler used her feathered staff to create a pillar of fire, although this time the dragon that appeared was much smaller and cuter than the fully-grown dragon Mai had summoned earlier. "This little guy gets different effects depending on how many Harpie Ladies I control. With at least one, you can't attack any of my other monsters. With at least two, his attack and defense points are doubled. And with at least three, he can destroy one of your monsters once per turn. Since I have four monsters that are currently treated as Harpie Lady, I'm going to use his effect to destroy one of your Flare Dragons!"

The tiny dragon reared his head back as he charged a small ball of fire in his mouth—and then with a sound like a hacking cat, he spit it out. The tiny ball rolled along the ground and came to rest underneath one of Joey's monsters, who looked at it quizzically for a few seconds. Then the tiny ball exploded into a pillar of fire that surrounded the dragon and sent it to the Graveyard. What followed was almost thirty seconds of the tiny dragon purring, both in pride at what it had accomplished and appreciation at the petting it was getting in sequence from each of Mai's other monsters.

Still, that was Mai's last move, so she was forced to end her turn. Joey drew his next card and sighed. "You know, I feel really bad about having to do this to a baby, but it's time to end this duel. I switch my Red-Eyes Retro Dragon to attack mode, and then I use my Normal Summon to grant Red-Eyes Black Flare Dragon its effect. Now, Red-Eyes Retro Dragon, destroy her Harpie's Pet Baby Dragon with Chronology Combustion!"

Since Harpie's Channeler summoned monsters in defense position, Harpie's Pet Baby Dragon didn't get the benefit from Harpie Lady 1's effect, leaving it with only 1200 defense points against Joey's dragon's 1700 attack points. The baby dragon burst into flames immediately and disappeared before the fire condensed into a ball and flew back into Red-Eyes Retro Dragon's mouth, looking like a fireball launched in reverse.

"Now, Red-Eyes Black Flare Dragon, destroy one of her Harpie Lady 1s!" With a 300 fewer attack points, there was nothing Mai's monster could do to withstand to blast of plasma launched by Joey's dragon, and she was reduced to ashes taking 300 of Mai's life points with her. However, Mai knew that was irrelevant as the attack also signified the end of Joey's Battle Phase. His Red-Eyes Black Flare Dragon landed with a powerful gust from his wings—which ended up launching the fire engulfing his body directly towards Mai. The effect would have inflicted 2400 points of damage—if she had had that many life points. Since she only had 1700, the damage ended the duel.

The crowd burst into applause as the holograms all disappeared. The announcer called out "And the winner of the last quarterfinal duel is Japanese champion Joey Wheeler!" but Mai ignored him as she walked to meet Joey in the middle of the arena. As she shook his hand to signify the end of their duel, she couldn't help but chuckle.

"You know, between this, Duelist Kingdom, and Battle City, it seems like every time the two of us are in the same tournament, I end up making an exit in my first duel of the final rounds. I feel like you've must have learned something about ancient curses all those years you were running around with the Pharaoh—think there's anything like that on me?"

Joey just laughed. "I don't think so—I'm pretty sure we're done with the whole 'tournament being influenced by magic' schtick. Still, it was a great duel, and I'm looking forward to dinner tonight. I'll even let you pick the place since you're paying…"

 **Author's Note:** Mai's deck would be much stronger if XYZ summoning existed in this universe. However, while I could create an in-universe justification for why Synchro Summons would appear now, be absent in about 8 years when GX happens, and then reappear for 5Ds, I didn't think I could stretch that reason to XYZ monsters.

Yugi's flashbacks are to the Bonds Beyond Time movie and the series finale to GX. It's a bit difficult to place where on his timeline both duels would be, but luckily both involve time travel so it's easy to say the events just got wiped from his memory until something shook them loose.

I'd also like to take some time to thank lalalei for their reviews on this story!


	5. Chapter 5

Yugi and Rebecca had practically run to the elevator as soon as they saw Mai take the hit from Flare Dragon's effect, not wanting to waste any time getting up to the tournament level. Unfortunately, no amount of hurrying would speed up an elevator, so while they were waiting for it to descend to their floor Rebecca tried to take stock of the situation.

"Okay, being proactive is great, but do we actually have any actions we can take here? We have no clue what's going on and I can't exactly go into a more thorough search to see if I missed anything suspicious about anyone at this tournament with what I have on me. Right now our only plan is just to have you look at any duel spirits to see if there's anything weird and hope what you do see isn't as crazy as the hallucinations you've also been having."

Yugi just grit his teeth. "Okay, everything you said basically just sums up my entire plan at this point, but I'm not going to sit and do nothing when there's a chance that people might be in danger. It's slim, but if something happens to Joey, Mai, or Mokuba and we could have caught it beforehand, I would never forgive myself. And now that I've had a little more time to think about it, I'm not so sure they're hallucinations. I think they're just memories—but memories of things that never happened."

The elevator arrived on their floor and they quickly stepped in and pressed the button for the stadium floor. Rebecca just glanced at Yugi. "Okay, I've tried thinking of how that last sentence makes sense, and I'm stumped. Would you care to fill me in?"

Yugi nodded. "Remember what I told you about the Pharaoh's Memory World? We were all sucked into a Shadow Game based on Atem's memories—but even though all the people should have been exactly as Atem remembered them, some of them were able to interact with our group. Now ask yourself, would you be able to exactly remember the entire population of your city, including remembering how they would interact with people who were never there?"

"On a smaller scale, in the memory world I managed to share energy with Atem to summon the Winged Dragon of Ra and win the game well before Zorc could be summoned—so the spirit of the ring turned back time and made sure that never happened. Of course, I can still remember it, even though it never happened within a world that couldn't exist. I wonder if this is a similar case—through time travel or some other crazy magic, I'm experiencing memories of things I went through that technically never happened."

Rebecca just heaved a sigh. "The saddest part is, what you just said makes a lot more sense than some of the things we've been caught up the last few years. Okay, so we'll add 'potential time travel' to the list of things you dealt with in high school and try to get on with our lives." The elevator then arrived at its destination, opening to reveal Joey and Mai's surprised faces.

"What are you two doing up here? We were just heading down to join you." Seeing the serious look that crossed his two friend's faces, Joey immediately turned serious as well as he waited for the answer. Since Yugi was busy giving the stadium—and more importantly, the Red-Eyes Black Dragon and the Harpie Lady that were hovering just behind his friends—a once over, Rebecca took the liberty of answering.

"The short answer is something weird happened to Yako's duel spirit—it's got some sort of magical collar it's trying to rip off. Yugi's here to check on any of the other duelists now that we know what to look for—and also to warn you two to be careful. We aren't sure what's going on, but just in case this is the start of something dangerous we wanted to be as prepared as possible."

Yugi flinched back as Rebecca finished her sentence, but Joey seemed to understand the reason. "My monsters just all came out and surrounded me, didn't they? Or something like that—there's no way this massive surge of protectiveness I just felt came from one monster." Yugi merely nodded.

"Yeah, that's pretty much all of them. Although I'm going to have to ask some of the…flock? Pride? Whatever you call a group of dragons—to stick back. I can't make them all out when they are all on top of each other like this to notice if anything's up."

Joey's dragons must have organized themselves a little better, as Yugi's eyes soon returned to moving in circles as he gave barely perceptible nods to the duel spirits only he was able to see. With this continuing, Rebecca just gave a small wave of dismissal. "Well, my spirits have already gotten the all clear for now, and since I can morally support you just as well from the other side of the stadium I'm going to see if I can find and warn Mokuba. Good luck to you in your next duel Joey—just know that if it's against me all the luck in the world won't help you win."

Joey rolled his eyes. "Sure thing, short stuff. Same goes for you if you end up dueling next." As Rebecca wandered off, Mai took the task of making it look like the three of them were in conversation so Yugi wouldn't get too many weird looks. She wished she would be able to help in some way, but like Joey she couldn't see any duel spirits. She could always feel the presence—and occasional flashes of emotion—from her Harpie cards, but she was lucky to get anything more than a vague sense from anybody else's monsters.

"Okay, feel free to ignore me if this is distracting, but can't you normally only see other people's duel monster spirits when the monsters would be making themselves known? Why would Yako's guardian monster feel the need to show itself after the duel was over?"

Yugi never took his eyes off of the horde of spirits, but answered her just the same. "That's what tipped me off to something being weird in the first place. And there's no need to worry about distracting me—being able to hold two conversations at once is a skill you pick up when you share a body with an Egyptian spirit and need to talk to him without drawing any attention to yourself."

Mai thought it best not to comment on the fact that Yugi really didn't do a good job of hiding the fact he was seeing spirits. Then again, considering the little snippets she had heard about his life before solving the Millennium Puzzle, maybe nobody bothered him when he started talking to spirits because he was already the weird kid at school.

Any further opportunity for conversation ended when the announcer's voice cut in over the loudspeaker. "Alright everyone, now that the quarterfinals are finished it's time for one last randomly selected duel! With only three duels remaining, you'll get to see some of the best action yet. Now, let's decide the first semifinal matchup!"

The faces of the four remaining duelists appeared on the jumbotron in the stadium, and after a few seconds Joey's and Jamaal's faces lit up. As the crowd cheered and Jamaal walked towards the center of the stage from the other side of the stadium, Joey turned to Yugi. "Okay, before I head out there, are all of my monsters good?"

Yugi paused for a second before responding. "Alright, just finished everything up. Be careful out there Joey, but remember we don't know that Jamaal actually did anything. He's the most likely suspect, but this could be anything at this point. Try to win quickly, but don't treat him like an enemy."

Joey nodded, but while the duelist agreed it seemed his monsters had a different idea. Half of his assembled Red-Eyes monsters went and surrounded Jamaal, roaring out their challenge. The American had no reaction, although the spirits of Silent Magician LV 8 and Endymion, the Master Magician appeared around him and formed glowing orbs of energy around their staffs—not quite a threat, but a clear warning about what would happen if things turned ugly.

Yugi's eyes couldn't help but be drawn towards the golden light that so closely matched the shine from the collar on Beast Machine King Barbaros Ür, but this could easily be a coincidence. After all, both monsters had already been proven to attack with golden energy. It also didn't look like Jamaal was able to see the spirits at all, since he didn't bother reacting to the threatening army of dragons as he waited while Joey walked to meet him in the center of the stage.

Joey tried to keep himself calm as he walked up to Jamaal. In all of his time dueling, he couldn't remember a case like this where going into the duel he thought he might be battling the next evil nutjob. Usually it went in reverse—like in his duels against Odion and Valon where he thought he was going up against a horrible person only to gain respect for them through their dueling. Of course, there were plenty of other times where he was just going up against normal people—and of the bad guys he'd gone up against, nobody would put Rex Raptor, Weevil Underwood, or Zigfried von Schroder in the same class as Marik or the evil Bakura. He'd also dueled the last two, of course, but he had gone into those two duels knowing exactly who he was facing. The uncertainty was a new experience.

It certainly didn't help that Jamaal appeared nervous as Joey walked up to him. However, a clear explanation for that arose as the two shook hands. "Okay, wow. I'll admit, I was a little skeptical about you being the second ranked duelist in the world, but I can see why now. I never get nervous before dueling, yet I'm having a hard time stopping my hands from shaking now. There's like this duelist aura about you or something."

In his mind, Joey snarked that the "or something" probably had more to do with all the dragons he could tell were trying to intimidate his opponent. At least, he assumed that was what was happening—he wasn't able to see them himself, but he could feel a bit of his monsters' feelings and it reminded him of how he felt meeting Serenity's boyfriend. Still, Jamaal wasn't reacting as if he could actually see the spirits either, so Joey supposed it could just be jitters. Out loud, he responded. "Don't worry about that. I'm living proof that an underdog can rise to the top, and besides, the World Championship last year should show that on any given day I can be defeated."

Jamaal just shook his head. "Yeah, but I don't want to repeat that. Sure, that guy beat you on the first turn, but he also got Butterfly Dagger—Elma banned from tournament play for doing it." Joey laughed in response. "Well, let's try to have a better duel than that. And let's aim for no cards getting banned as a result of what we're about to do."

The laugh seemed to help Jamaal, as his hands finally stopped shaking before he turned and took up his position on the other end of the arena. Joey likewise walked to his position before facing his opponent. He took a second to take in the roar of the crowd before the announcer called out, "Let the first duel of the semifinals begin!"

Joey drew his first five cards and already started wondering how this would play out. With Black Metal Dragon, Dragon Shrine, Red-Eyes Fang with Chain, and two copies of Inferno Fire Blast, he had plenty of potential but no real plays he could make yet. Jamaal didn't seem to have that issue as he just quickly glanced at his opening hand before declaring, "I'll let you have the first turn here."

Joey nodded his agreement and drew his next card—only to stare at it in disbelief. He had drawn Red-Eyes Fusion. Normally this card was one he was always happy to draw, as it let him call out his strongest monsters at basically any time. However, in this situation, it was almost too good to use. Even if Jamaal was an evil nutjob, did he really deserve to go out of the tournament like this? But if Joey didn't use it, would holding back just be an even bigger insult to the opposing duelist?

"Hey, Joey? Earth to Joey! Hey, are you in there? It's your move." Jamaal's taunt managed to snap Joey out of his reverie. Making up his mind, he addressed his opponent. "Listen, I just wanted to apologize for what I'm about to do. Still, from personal experience, it's much better to get steamrolled by someone than it is for them to hold back and let you make a play. So, nothing against you personally, but I'm ending this duel right now. I activate Red-Eyes Fusion, fusing my Red-Eyes Black Dragon and my Meteor Dragon Red-Eyes Impact from my deck to summon Meteor Black Comet Dragon!"

A flaming meteor crashed down on Joey's side of the field, sending out a shockwave that knocked Jamaal backwards and caused his life points to click down to 6600. The meteor then unfurled a pair of wings to reveal it was a dragon carved out of black stone and heated to the point that some areas of its body were partially melted and glowing orange.

"When this dragon is summoned, I send one Red-Eyes monster from my deck to my graveyard to inflict damage equal to half of that monster's attack—so the 1400 damage you took was courtesy of my Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon. But it doesn't stop there. By summoning my dragon with Red-Eyes Fusion, its name on the field becomes Red-Eyes Black Dragon. This lets me activate my two copies of Inferno Fire Blast—each of which inflicts damage to your life points equal to the attack of a Red-Eyes Black Dragon on my field. With 3500 attack, my Meteor Black Comet Dragon will now inflict 7000 more points of damage!"

The stone dragon began glowing more brightly and flames started shooting from various seams in its body. It then launched two fireballs at Jamaal that took out the rest of his life points, bringing the duel to an abrupt end and leaving the crowd in stunned silence. It even took a few seconds for the announcer to recover before he finally shouted out, "Unbelievable! Earlier Mokuba Kaiba managed to pull off a one-turn victory, but now Joey Wheeler has topped that by winning the duel on its very first turn!"

Rebecca huffed in frustration. "Okay, seriously? When I challenged him to finish a duel faster than you finished off Sheppard, I didn't expect him to actually do it. I almost feel bad for anyone in the audience who blinked at the wrong time. We'll just have to make sure we give them a better show." It was a statement that appeared to be a good explanation on the surface for her frustration, but after briefly locking eyes with Mokuba she knew he understood there was a significantly different reason for her feelings.

Luckily, she and Mokuba had had plenty of practice working out their little secret communication techniques. It had started when she had had to go through one of the most mind-numbing interview processes ever after Mokuba had hired her to improve KaibaCorp's cyber security. Of course, this had happened immediately after taking down the rogue Seto AI, and with the board scrambling to duck responsibility themselves and appear like they were taking things seriously they hadn't taken kindly to their new CEO's suggestion to hire someone who had turned thirteen the month earlier.

About the only thing that kept her sane during those many hours of alternating boredom and interrogation was Mokuba's presence as a friendly face in the room—and the little game the developed where they would try to communicate what they really thought of the proceedings without appearing unprofessional or childish. Their little game had just grown over time to the point where they could usually communicate without saying a word. Of course, neither of them actually had any form of magical powers to let them perfectly convey thoughts—in fact, Mokuba seemed particularly dense to certain messages Rebecca was trying to get him to understand—but it usually got the job done in cases where the two of them couldn't safely discuss things out loud with people around them.

In this case, Rebecca had been forced to use the silent communication method because Mokuba was surrounded by corporate sponsors and local politicians, so any discussion of the supernatural would have to wait. Pegasus hadn't been able to make it to Arizona, so the one person in the corporate sphere Rebecca trusted to take any talk about mysticism in stride was noticeably absent. Since Mokuba couldn't pull off the same eccentric vibe that Pegasus had that allowed the creator of modern Duel Monsters to say whatever he wanted in whatever company without it impacting his reputation, it was best to avoid any discussion of the supernatural in anything connected to KaibaCorp's business ventures.

Understanding enough of the underlying message she was sending to him, Mokuba was quick to make his excuses to leave the world of business. "We'll pick up this discussion after the tournament is over. I've got a duel to win—although actually, I've got two duels in a row to win." Rebecca blinked before responding.

"Well, Mr. Kaiba, best not get too far ahead of ourselves. After all, I'm the one who beat you at the last national championship." The warning included a glare that translated to "You're trying too hard at being your brother again. You can't pull off his ego, but you have too many of your own good qualities to try and push all of them aside. Seto would want you to be your own person and make Kaiba Corporation better than it was in your own way, not just the way he would do things."

Mokuba shot her a sheepish grin that let her know he understood the hidden message, and the two young duelists began walking towards the arena field. As soon as they were far enough away that he wasn't worried about being overheard, Mokuba whispered to Rebecca. "Okay, something weird is clearly going on here. What's the real reason you're a bit on edge? Are we talking security risk, magic, or both?"

"Definitely the second, unsure about the first. Something weird happened to Yako's duel spirit—Yugi was able to see it struggling with a glowing golden collar. No idea if it's any kind of a threat but definitely something Yugi's going to be keeping an eye on. Jamaal is at this point the most likely suspect, but I highly doubt Joey's duel with him lasted long enough to get any more information. It might be someone in the audience or it might be a coincidence, but I think we've all been though enough not to trust things to coincidences."

Mokuba cracked a smile, although it didn't reach his eyes. "Well, I don't know. If I inherited a full dose of Kaiba paranoia, I wouldn't have been able to look past all the red flags on Sara. This whole tournament wouldn't be happening if I hadn't hired her. I trust you to find whoever is behind this. We'll just have to keep our monsters safe on this duel."

With that, the two shook each other's hands and took up their positions on the opposite end of the dueling field while the announcer cried out, "Ladies and gentlemen, this next match is sure to keep you on the edge of your seats—we have a rematch of last year's American national title duel! These two young duelists have been taking the world by storm, and many are calling them the second generation of dueling titans. Give it up for defending American champion Rebecca Hawkins and tournament host Mokuba Kaiba!"


	6. Chapter 6

_"Give it up for defending American champion Rebecca Hawkins and tournament host Mokuba Kaiba!"_

Rebecca couldn't help but scoff at the announcement. Switching off her microphone, she addressed Mokuba as she drew her opening hand. "What does this guy mean, second generation of dueling titans? I mean, sure, it's flattering to compare you, Leon, and me to Seto, Joey, and Yugi, but do they realize you're only five years younger than Yugi? Not really a generational gap there. Besides, I started playing Duel Monsters before it even got exported to Japan, so I've been playing longer than Yugi anyway."

Mokuba just shrugged as he drew his opening hand as well. With a glance that told Rebecca he would be having a talk with the announcer later, he verbally went on with the duel. "Well, seeing as you are the defending champion, it only seems right to let you have the first turn." Rebecca just shook her head as she looked at her opening cards, which consisted of Alexandrite Dragon, Rope of Life, Adamantine Sword Revival, Marie the Fallen One, and Strong Wind Dragon. Flipping her microphone back on, she responded to Mokuba's teasing tone with some banter of her own.

"Well, that's awfully sweet of you, especially considering how much of an advantage it is for a Cyber Dragon deck to play second. Still, with my opening hand, I think it's only fair to give you that handicap. Let's duel!" She drew her first card, which ended up being her second copy of Marie the Fallen One. With this, she was even more certain of her opening move. One of the downsides of Rope of Life was it required dumping her entire hand—but in this situation, after making her move two thirds of her hand would be better off in the graveyard anyway.

"I'll start by summoning my Alexandrite Dragon in attack mode. Then, I set two cards face down and end my turn." The jeweled dragon with 2000 attack appeared with a roar, although to Rebecca's ears it sounded more playful than ferocious. It seemed her duel spirits were taking a bit more of an active interest in this duel than they had in her duel with Crowler, but she wasn't sure how to feel about that. On the one hand, it was nice to know they were taking the situation seriously—but on the other, she wasn't sure if they were in more danger by making themselves more distinct.

Mokuba didn't seem to notice Alexandrite Dragon's response to seeing him—or if he did, he made no reaction as he drew his first card. He just smirked at Rebecca on seeing his first card. "Well, this seems almost prophetic. You mentioned the advantage Cyber Dragon has going second—well, guess what I just drew. I Special Summon Cyber Dragon in attack mode!"

The 2100 attack point monster appeared across from her with its typical roar. However, Mokuba reacted differently than normal, making Rebecca wonder if just like she had with her monster Mokuba was hearing something different than everyone else. He seemed to shake off whatever the sound had done to him and continued with his move. "Cyber Dragon, attack Alexandrite Dragon with Evolution Burst!"

The stream of blue lightning blasted Alexandrite Dragon to pieces, but Rebecca didn't even react to the loss of 100 life points as she quickly sprung her trap. "When one of my monsters is destroyed by battle, I can activate Rope of Life! I discard my entire hand, and that monster comes back from the Graveyard with 800 extra attack points!" She sent Strong Wind Dragon and both copies of Marie the Fallen One to the Graveyard, causing a deep pit to appear on her field. A glowing rope shot into the abyss, and the empowered Alexandrite Dragon used it as a guide to bring itself back to the field.

However, Rebecca wasn't done with her move just yet. "Since I just Special Summoned a Dragon-type monster from the Graveyard, I can activate my quick-play spell, Adamantine Sword Revival! I tribute my revived Alexandrite Dragon in order to summon Diamond Head Dragon from my deck!"

A golden sword flew up out of the pit shortly after Alexandrite Dragon did, stopping right in front of the dragon's jaws. It bit onto the hilt of the blade, and the energy contained within the sword burst outwards in a dome of jade green light. When the light had faded, in Alexandrite Dragon's place was a massive dragon the same color as the previous light—though this dragon had protrusions of diamond growing down its back as well as protruding from its head like a horn.

The dragon gave a half-hearted roar once it saw who its opponent was. Rebecca wasn't sure if there was a genetic trait in the Kaiba family that drew dragons to them or if her monsters were only so reluctant to battle because they personally liked Mokuba a lot. However, the feeling didn't seem to be fully mutual, as Mokuba looked less than impressed by her monster.

"You're still using Diamond Head Dragon? Sure, at this point it has 3800 attack points, but that's all it has going for it. Seeing as it's a dead draw and can only be summoned under a specific set of circumstances, I wouldn't expect a duelist of your level to be using it in tournament play after all these years."

Rebecca could tell he was mostly teasing her, but she still felt the need to defend her card. "I think we both know there's more to cards than power, or even their usefulness in a duel. I use this card because it was given to me by a good friend who helped me through a rough time when I thought another friend of mine was gone for good."

Mokuba's eyes widened at the revelation—of course, he knew enough to piece out the identities of the two friends she was talking about, but she had never told him exactly what Diamond Head Dragon meant to her. The card had been a gift from Duke after their disastrous duel against Valon. She had been convinced that she had just lost the one chance at finding a way to get Yugi back, and also felt like she had absolutely nothing to offer in the quest to save the world. Duke had used the long drive out to San Francisco to get her out of that dark place and convince her she had plenty to offer—which proved to be true when she was able to hack through the security to get the Pharaoh and Seto through the gauntlet Dartz had put in their way.

Shaking herself from her memories that she couldn't comfortably share with a stadium full of people, she turned her attention back to Mokuba. "I'll just have to tell you the whole story after the tournament. I always try to make use of the cards people special to me give me—if it were legally playable, I'd find a way to include The Ties of Friendship into my deck as well. Who knows—maybe if you were to specially give me a card, it would find its way into my deck as well?"

Rebecca found herself needing to bring her face back under control—for a second there, she was worried she had let the _take a hint_ she had been mentally screaming at Mokuba for the past few months had made it out. On the list of things she didn't want to reveal to an entire stadium, that was right up there with the magical history of the game. However, Mokuba just looked relieved at her words for a second before he smirked at her.

"Well, I'm looking forward to that being put into practice next month. Still, we can't afford to get too far ahead of ourselves. It's still my turn, and I haven't used my Normal Summon yet. So, I'll summon my Cyber Valley in attack mode, set one card face down, and end my turn." The zero-attack point variant of Cyber Dragon appeared beside the original version, and Rebecca could have sworn the new arrival nodded at her while it hissed its arrival. If she saw the slight movement, though, Mokuba must have seen more because he was glaring at his newest monster.

Shaking off whatever Mokuba's duel spirit was trying to do, Rebecca started her turn by drawing Dragon Shield. While it was a helpful card, in this situation the protection it offered wasn't worth the drawback of taking away Diamond Head Dragon's ability to deal damage. Of course, that was a decision that would wait until her Main Phase, and her Standby Phase was going to be busy. "Since I sent two copies of Marie the Fallen One to the graveyard, I now get both of their effects. Normally you have to be careful choosing to listen to the angel and the devil over your shoulder, but in this case, listening to both of these fallen angels will serve to increase my life points!"

The two dark angels both flared their wings, unleashing a shower of golden dust. Rebecca's life points clicked up to 8100 and then to 8300 as each effect gave her 200 more life points. With the life point recovery out of the way, she turned her attention towards taking away Mokuba's. "Now onto the Battle Phase. Diamond Head Dragon, destroy his Cyber Dragon with Carbon Cyclone!"

Diamond Head Dragon's horn started glowing with light energy. The energy refracted in on itself and increased in intensity until it all burst out in a maelstrom that consumed Mokuba's monster and took away 1700 of his life points. With a 2000 life point lead and a 3800-attack point monster, Rebecca knew most duelists would be feeling pretty good about themselves at this point. However, she had played against Mokuba enough to know that he could easily turn this all around with a single card.

However, it seemed her caution wasn't warranted, as Mokuba added the card he drew to his hand and didn't bother summoning anything. "Well, I'll set one card face-down and end my turn." It was an underwhelming turn, but with Cyber Valley still on the field Rebecca knew it would be difficult to damage him. She drew her Silent Doom card, and decided she should at least fortify her defenses.

"First, both effects of Marie the Fallen One activate, bringing me up to 8700!" The golden dust from the two fallen angels restored her life points before she continued. "Then, I activate my Silent Doom spell card, letting me summon one normal monster to the field in defense position—though the monster won't be able to attack as long as it remains on the field. Be reborn, Alexandrite Dragon!" She reached out her hand, and her duel disk used this as the starting point for a glowing cord of energy that reached into the ground and pulled out the jewel-encrusted dragon.

With only 100 defense points, Alexandrite Dragon wasn't much of a defense—especially if Mokuba managed to summon Cyber End Dragon to inflict piercing damage. However, if he summoned Cyber Twin Dragon, having a second monster would be crucial to protect her life points. "And now we get to the completely pointless Battle Phase. Diamond Head Dragon, let him draw a card by attacking Cyber Valley, but don't bother trying to make it flashy."

Diamond Head Dragon's horn began glowing, but before it could launch the attack, Cyber Valley exploded like a flashbang grenade. The burst of light and sound disrupted Diamond Head Dragon's attack and let Mokuba draw a card at the end of the Battle Phase. "Well, that's it for me then. I end my turn."

Mokuba just smirked as he drew his next card. "Well, I think it's time I take the offensive again. First, I'll activate my facedown card, Photon Lead! This lets me special summon a Level 4 or lower Light attribute monster from my hand, so I summon Cyber Kirin!" The four-legged creature appeared on the field, at the same time a feeling of dread sunk in to Rebecca's stomach. With only 300 attack points, Cyber Kirin wasn't much use as a battler—but it did have the potent effect of making its controller immune to effect damage for one turn by tributing it. To her knowledge, Mokuba only had one card in his deck that inflicted effect damage to himself—and she really wasn't looking forward to facing a fused Cyber Dragon summoned with Power Bond.

Mokuba's next play basically confirmed her fears. "Now, I Normal Summon my Cyber Dragon Core! When this little guy is Normal Summoned, he lets me add one Cyber spell or trap card from my deck to my hand." What looked like a baby version of Cyber Dragon appeared on his field as he selected the card from his deck. Then he finally made the move Rebecca saw coming.

"You probably knew this was coming, but I activate Power Bond! With Cyber Dragon Core's effect to treat it as Cyber Dragon on the field, I can fuse it and the Cyber Dragon in my hand to summon Cyber Twin Dragon with 5600 attack points!" The powered-up twin-headed dragon sounded just as reluctant to fight as all of Mokuba's monsters did, but that was a small consolation with Mokuba's next move. "Next, I activate my trap card, Rare Metalmorph! By equipping this to a Machine-type monster, it gains 500 attack and lets me negate one spell card that targets the equipped monster. It's pretty much the perfect complement to Cyber Twin Dragon, who can use the attack boost twice a turn and really benefits from any form of effect protection."

The twin-headed dragon gleamed briefly as it was coated in the shiny new layer of armor- but as soon as the effect finished it was nearly impossible to distinguish a change in the appearance of the monster. Rebecca made a note to tell Mokuba later to get a programmer working on changing that—while it didn't really impact her since she didn't have any spell cards that targeted an opponent's monsters in her deck, it really should be more obvious to the audience whenever something is equipped to a monster. Mokuba seemed to be of the same mind, as he hurried through the rest of his turn to try and draw focus away from the activation of his last card.

"Cyber Kirin, attack her Alexandrite Dragon with Galvanic Gallop!" 300 attack points may not have been much, but they were more than enough for Mokuba's monster to begin sparking with electricity and plow through her Alexandrite Dragon, which shattered like glass. "Now, Cyber Twin Dragon, destroy her Diamond Head Dragon, and then attack her directly! Evolution Twin Burst!"

Rebecca couldn't help but notice Cyber Twin Dragon seemed to hesitate to carry out the order, and even when it complied the two bursts of orange plasma were much smaller than the ones that it had used against Sheppard. If the duel spirit was actually solid, that probably would have made a difference—but this was a tournament duel without any magic effects to make the cards real. Instead, the duelists dealt with a feedback system that blasted them with air in proportion to the number of life points they lost. It meant the audience no longer had to rely on the acting skills of a duelist in order to get a picture of how much damage was dealt, but the system hadn't been pushed to this level before. Between the destruction of Diamond Head Dragon and the direct attack, Rebecca lost 8400 life points. Instead of just getting knocked backwards, she was blown off of her feet.

She had just enough time to twist herself around in the air so she could protect her head slightly before she crashed into the concrete and skidded a few feet. All the air was knocked from her lungs on impact, so her first order of business was trying to regain that as she lay gasping on the ground. To fight off the feeling of helplessness she started focusing on one thing at a time to get herself back together.

 _Breathe in, breathe out._ Her right side where she landed had a dull ache with each breath, but it wasn't a particularly deep or excruciating pain, so it was probably just skin deep and not something more serious like a bruised or a broken rib. _Breathe in, breathe out._ Though her right side felt like it had had a close encounter with a sander, she didn't feel like she was laying on something wet or sticky. That probably meant she wasn't bleeding, so that was another lucky break in her situation. _Breathe in, breathe—_

"Rebecca! Are you okay? I'm so sorry!" Hearing Mokuba's voice immediately drew her attention away from herself, especially considering he sounded closer than he had been and she could make out footsteps. Thinking quickly, she called out- though since she was still recovering her breath it came out a lot softer and pathetic sounding than she had hoped. It also didn't help that she had to pause to gasp in a breath every couple of words.

"Stop! Don't come…any closer. If you…touch me…you'll be…disqualified…for interfering…with your…opponent. I'll be…fine. Just give…me a…minute." She didn't even have to look at him to tell he wasn't happy about stopping, but he at least complied with her wishes. As she took a few more seconds to catch her breath, she wondered how many people had acted in such a way that the rule needed to be created—and then remembering her duel with Valon, she realized physical altercations may have been more common than expected in what was nominally a card game for young adults.

Once she was a little more stable with her breathing, she used her left arm to prop herself up and push herself back to her feet. It wasn't comfortable, but it was possible to support her whole weight on her right leg, so nothing seemed broken there. As a last check, she tried moving her right arm. She winced in pain, but was able to move it to its full range of motion. She'd definitely have some lovely bruises the next couple of days, but it seemed like she had avoided any real damage.

Having finished her little self-checkup, she was ready to continue the duel—only for a man in a white uniform to appear in front of her. She had briefly forgotten that Mokuba had hired a medical staff for this tournament, so now she had to go through basically the same analysis she just did herself but from someone with an actual medical degree. While she was going through the checkup, she made sure to get a few snippets of conversation in with Mokuba—which was made more difficult by the fact that she couldn't always face him while the medic checked her for signs of a concussion.

"Mokuba, stop worrying. I feel fine. I mean, it hurts, obviously, but my head is clear and nothing is broken. I can finish the duel, and I'll heal just fine."

"Yeah, but—"

"But nothing. Sure, it was an oversight not to consider how the feedback system would react if someone took over 8000 points of damage basically at once, but now you can patch that and it's not like I'm going to sue Kaiba Corporation for damages." Glancing down at her outfit, she amended her last statement. "Okay, this will cost you something. You're going to have to buy me a new dueling outfit. Do you know how hard it is to find something that looks professional, yet also looks close enough to a schoolgirl uniform that anybody who goes into the duel thinking I'm just a kid would keep underestimating me?"

Mokuba held up his arms in mock surrender. "Oh no, a shopping trip. How will I ever survive?" With a welcome smile once again gracing his face, he continued. "I'd be happy to pay. Although, maybe this is a benefit. I mean, you've been wearing a similar outfit to duel since the Grand Championship a couple years ago. Sure, you swapped the socks for leggings, but that's probably just for the unseasonably cool temperatures they're having this fall."

"Right, like Mr. ' _I wear white suits for everything_ ' has any right to lecture anybody else about sticking to one fashion choice." The last check the medic had her do was testing the motion in her right arm, which once again brought on a wince but no further problems. The medic declared her fit to finish the duel, although she would have to check in with them after the tournament for a more thorough treatment.

Rebecca gave a dramatic sigh. "Well, looks like there goes Grandpa's plan to take me out to enjoy nature free from technology. Never mind that we can see plenty of desert around us in California, he always thinks I need to spend some time off the grid. Oh well, time to finish the duel. Ready to lose, Mokuba?"

She turned to Mokuba, only to see him blushing and pointedly looking all around her, but not directly at her. She quirked her eyebrow at him, only to have him start stammering. "Yeah, exactly. Though…you…" His eyes flicked back to her only for him to quickly spin on his heel and awkwardly powerwalk away, shaking his head. He seemed to compose himself for a second as he called back to her, "Sorry, you're right. Let's finish the duel."

Sometimes, Rebecca wished she could understand what was going through Mokuba's head more often than she already could. This was one of the weirdest things she had seen from him and she didn't know quite what to make of it. It threw her off so much that she barely heard Mokuba announce his next moves.

"Now that it's my Main Phase 2, I'll activate Cyber Kirin's effect. By sacrificing this monster, I can reduce any effect damage I would take for the rest of this turn zero—which means I won't have to pay the 2800 life points for summoning Cyber Twin Dragon with Power Bond. Then, I'll set one card face down and end my turn."

Thanks to Cyber Kirin, Mokuba's life points remained at 6400, while Rebecca had a measly 300. The only bright side was she already had Dragon Shield in her hand, so as long as she drew a Level 4 or lower dragon type monster she would have something that could protect her from Cyber Twin Dragon's 6100 attack points. She drew her next card, only to wince as she realized her usual drawing motion was a little too dramatic for her injured arm.

However, the card she drew was enough to make her forget her pain. "Okay, so on my Standby Phase, both copies of Marie the Fallen One in my graveyard activate their effects, so I'll start closing the life point gap now." As the golden dust from the effects surrounded her and her life points clicked up to 700, Rebecca wondered if she would have been better off in a shadow duel. After all, if they could make the damage from monster attacks real, could they make the healing effects as well? Still, she wasn't even using the occult-inspired duel disks from the preliminary match, so there was no way to tell. Shaking herself out of her musing, she continued her turn.

"Of course, 400 life points doesn't seem like it would make a huge difference, but this duel is a marathon, not a sprint. If every one of my opponents this tournament is going to feel the need to play Power Bond against me to summon a massive beatstick, it only seems right to take away its ability to deal any damage. I summon Golem Dragon in attack mode, and then I equip it with my Dragon Shield spell card!"

The clay dragon appeared on her field, though it was quickly coated in the red and blue armor from her equip card. "Now my Golem Dragon can't be destroyed by battle or card effects, and I don't take any battle damage from battles involving it. To make it even better, thanks to my dragon's effect, you aren't able to attack any other Dragon-type monster I would happen to summon. It doesn't matter how many attack points or attacks your Cyber Twin Dragon has if it can't use them. Now I'm ready to start preparing for my counterattack next turn—but I'll have to end my turn for now."

Mokuba sighed before starting his turn. "The worst part about this is, if I had selected a different target for Cyber Dragon Core last turn, I would win the duel this turn. I thought with you only having one card in your hand you wouldn't be able to pull off this combo, but I guess that's what I get for underestimating you." He drew his next card and started making his move. "I'll summon Cyber Dragon Drei in attack mode. Then, I activate my Cyber Network trap card!"

The gold-accented Cyber Dragon variant appeared on the field, and then Mokuba's trap card created a set of blue gridlines on the field connecting his Cyber Dragon Drei to the ghostly image of his banished Cyber Valley. "Cyber Network destroys itself on my third Standby Phase after activation. When it gets destroyed, I lose all of my Spell and Trap cards, but I can Special Summon as many of my banished Light Machine monsters as possible in exchange. It has another effect if I control a Cyber Dragon—once per turn, I can banish a Light Machine monster from my deck. Since Cyber Dragon Drei is treated as Cyber Dragon on the field, I'm going to banish my third Cyber Dragon from my deck this turn."

The ghostly image of an original Cyber Dragon appeared at the intersection of two gridlines—although Rebecca could tell Mokuba wasn't really aiming to swarm the field with this move. "What's the matter, Mokuba? Don't you trust the heart of the cards enough to get you out this situation? Seems strange that you have to thin out your deck to draw one of the cards you need. Don't tell me you inherited the old Kaiba skepticism."

Mokuba just shook his head. "Oh, I trust my deck enough that I'd be able to get the card I need—I'm just trying to speed it up a bit, because I also trust you to make the situation so much more difficult for me in the coming turns. Why don't you start now? I end my turn."

Rebecca drew her DNA Surgery card. This could help her in the future, since Golem Dragon protected other Dragon-type monsters from being attacked. Also, taking away the Machine type on Mokuba's monsters would slow his plays down as well, so it would be a win-win situation. "Okay, it's my Standby Phase, so you know what that means. Maries, will you do the honors?"

Mokuba cut in as the fallen angels were increasing Rebecca's life points. "I'll take this time to activate the effect of Cyber Network on your turn, banishing a second copy of Cyber Dragon Drei." The transparent monster appeared on the field at the same time Rebecca's life points increased to 1100. Sensing this would be a common theme in the upcoming turns, Rebecca got ready for the stall war. "I'll set one card face down, and then I'll switch my Golem Dragon to defense mode. Dragon Shield may protect my life points, but I'm not going to be dependent on that when I know you can destroy it. Your turn, Mokuba."

Mokuba drew his next card and just added it to his hand. "Well, there's nothing I can do other than activating the effect of Cyber Network to banish my third copy of Cyber Dragon Drei. Your turn again." As the incorporeal monster appeared, Mokuba now had more banished monsters than he had open monster zones, so he would have to choose which monster would stay banished. Moving to her turn, Rebecca drew Dragon's Mirror. She couldn't help smiling. Mokuba probably expected her to continue the stall war, but this would let her counterattack. The only problem was she needed some more setup in order to use it. "Well, I think we know the drill by now. Both Maries activate to give me 1500 life points, you use Cyber Network, and then I end my turn."

Mokuba chose to banish his second copy of Cyber Kirin, adding the four-legged creature to the collection of intangible dragons around his field. He then drew his next card and added it to his hand. "Yeah, we seem to be in a bit of a rut. I'll use Cyber Network to banish Cyber Dragon Zwei from my deck, and I'll end my turn."

Rebecca drew her next card—Fire Princess. "Okay, so my Maries activate, giving me 1900 life points. Are you going to banish anything on your last turn of Cyber Network?" Mokuba nodded, and a second copy of Cyber Dragon Zwei joined the banished monsters around his field. Rebecca nodded. "Okay, now that that's out of the way, I summon my Fire Princess in attack mode! Since she burns through 500 of your life points each time my life points increase, and the two Maries in my graveyard activate in sequence, get ready to lose 1000 life points on each of my Standby Phases."

Mokuba rolled his eyes. "You'd think after all the times we've dueled that you'd realize I know exactly what the card does. Of course, that only works if you can keep Fire Princess on the field. I'm guessing the face down card you have will stop me from attacking her?"

Rebecca smirked. "Bingo. I activate DNA Surgery so all monsters on the field are treated as Dragon types! Since Golem Dragon prevents you from attacking any Dragon type monster other than itself, my Fire Princess is now safe from harm. Also, since any monster on the field will no longer be a Machine, you won't be able to summon your Chimeratech Fortress Dragon after swarming the field since there are no Machines to use as fusion material."

The normally Pyro type monster shifted to a Dragon Type, once again growing scaled skin and reptilian eyes. Since Golem Dragon was already a Dragon type, it remained unchanged. Mokuba's monsters all changed type as well, but since his field consisted of two draconic monsters anyway it was impossible to see if they had actually changed or not—there wasn't much different between a mechanical dragon and a dragon completely covered in armor. "Well, that's going to do it for me. Your turn."

Mokuba drew his next card. The gridlines on the field from his Cyber Network trap card flared brightly before two Cyber Dragon Dreis and one Cyber Dragon shifted from looking like ghosts to appearing on the field as regular monsters. "It's my third Standby Phase, so I can summon these three back to the field. Of course, it costs me all my Spell and Trap cards, and I can't conduct my Battle Phase this turn. Since Cyber Twin Dragon doesn't need the 500 extra points from Rare Metalmorph and I wouldn't be able to attack you anyway, it's not really much of a cost. That's it for me."

Rebecca nodded. "I think it's been far too long since one of our life points decreased. Let's fix that, shall we?" Drawing her Luster Dragon, she smiled as her Standby Phase started. "So, first one copy of Marie the Fallen One activates, increasing my life points by 200. This triggers Fire Princess to deal 500 damage to you, just in time for the second Marie to activate and repeat the cycle." The glitter from the two fallen angels raised her life points to 2300, while two bolts of fire from her Princess's staff knocked Mokuba down to 5400.

"That was a solid start, but we also haven't had a Battle Phase in a while. I summon my Luster Dragon in attack mode!" The sapphire dragon appeared, letting out a dejected sounding roar that Rebecca was really tired of hearing from her monsters. Still, with 1900 attack points, it would be able to deal a bit of damage, and it was still safe from harm thanks to Golem Dragon. "Luster Dragon, destroy one of his Cyber Dragon Dreis with your Sapphire Spark!" The blue tinged fireball burned away one of the three Cyber Dragon variants Mokuba had on the field, taking 100 of Mokuba's life points with it.

Feeling like she had finally given the audience a bit of excitement that had been missing from the last few turns, Rebecca let herself relax—only for the change in posture to send a twinge of pain through her. With her feeling of celebration deflated, she sighed as she announced, "Okay, my turn's over."

Mokuba caught on to the change in her tone and sent her a look of sympathy, but it was all he could really do at the moment. "Well, you can add this card to the list of cards that don't really help me. I switch my two remaining Cyber Dragon Dreis to defense mode and end my turn."

Rebecca started her turn by drawing Alexandrite Dragon—and couldn't help the grin that spread across her face as she finally could pull off the move she had been waiting for without jeopardizing her current strategy. "Okay, first on the Standby Phase, we get two activations for Marie the Fallen One and Fire Princess!" Again, the golden dust restored her life points bringing her up to 2700, while the flaming orbs from Fire Princess knocked Mokuba down to 4300 life points.

"Now on my Main Phase, I summon Alexandrite Dragon in attack mode!" The multi-jeweled dragon appeared next to the sapphire colored Luster Dragon, though the details of her latest summon were irrelevant beyond its Dragon typing—which was guaranteed by DNA Surgery anyway. "Now, I activate the spell card, Dragon's Mirror! I can Fusion Summon one Dragon-type Fusion Monster by banishing the materials from my field or my graveyard. I banish my Alexandrite Dragon and Luster Dragon from the field, along with the Alexandrite Dragon, Strong Wind Dragon, and Diamond Head Dragon from my graveyard!"

A giant mirror appeared on the field with its reflective surface split into five facets. Cords of light shot out and grabbed Rebecca's two dragons on the field, forcibly dragging them into the mirror and trapping them inside. The three dragons from her graveyard soon joined them in their prison, with each dragon occupying a single facet. Then the five facets started warping together, distorting the image of the five dragons until it was impossible to tell where one dragon ended and another began—until the surface of the mirror rippled and a shape pushed its way out.

It only took a moment for the shape to become visible as a massive dragon's head, covered in yellow scales and bearing a crown of horns upon its head. It roared out a challenge—only for that challenge to be answered by another roar as a blue-scaled dragon head of equal size also forced itself out of the mirror. This continued in sequence with a black-scaled head, a head composed completely of fire, and a head covered in armor. Finally, the dragons forced their way entirely out of the mirror, revealing that the five dragons were actually just the heads of one golden-scaled behemoth.

Rebecca saw Mokuba flinch back at the sight of her monster, and only then did she remember her opponent had a bit of history with the card from back when Seto had been trapped in a virtual world—for the first time. Of course, this time around there was a lot less at stake—instead of representing a roadblock that would kill them all, this was just a monster being used in a duel to determine a trip to the finals of an exhibition match. Never mind that the monster sounded like it really wanted to attack Mokuba when all of her other monsters hadn't—it was just an angry duel spirit with a hologram for a body.

Not wanting to think too hard about that, Rebecca tried injecting some confidence in her voice as she announced her move. "Behold, the monster with the highest original attack in the game—Five-Headed Dragon! It can't be destroyed in battle with a Dark, Earth, Water, Fire, or Wind monster, though I'm not sure why they bothered with that effect. With 5000 attack and defense, it's hard enough to destroy this by battle anyway—and as your Cyber Twin Dragon proves, it's fairly easy to get a Light monster over 5000 attack compared to any other attribute."

"Still, even though it's just another powerful monster, those 5000 attack points do come in handy. Five-Headed Dragon, destroy his Cyber Dragon! Torrent of Tiamat!" Like the Mesopotamian goddess who inspired the attack name, Five-Headed Dragon was a powerful symbol of both the elements of creation and destruction. Each head was capable of generating its own element—though when the five heads combined wind, water, darkness, fire, and earth into a single attack, any monster on the receiving end would only know the power of destruction. In this case, the elemental deluge eradicated Mokuba's Cyber Dragon, carrying on to knock out 2900 of his life points to leave him with 1400.

The feedback system made him stumble back a step, but unlike when Rebecca had taken the massive damage from both of Cyber Twin Dragon's attacks, he stayed on his feet and didn't suffer any injury. Satisfied with the outcome, Rebecca smiled at him. "Well, that's all for me this turn. You better make a play soon though—with only 1400 life points, my Fire Princess will take you out in two more turns."

Mokuba drew his next card and returned her smile. "That's if you get two more turns—but you won't even be getting one. I just drew the card that would have won me the duel if I grabbed it with Cyber Dragon Core back before I summoned Cyber Twin Dragon. I activate the spell card, Cyber Repair Plant! If I have a Cyber Dragon in the Graveyard—and with the effects of Cyber Dragon Drei and Cyber Dragon Core I have 5 destroyed monsters that count as Cyber Dragon—I can add one Light Machine type monster from my deck to my hand."

He found the card he was looking for and added it to his hand. "You aren't the only one who can banish monsters to summon something much more powerful. I banish my three Cyber Dragons, my Cyber Dragon Drei, my Cyber Dragon Core, and my Cyber Kirin from the Graveyard in order to summon Cyber Eltanin!"

Mokuba's banished monsters all appeared for an instant on his field before they rocketed upwards, disappearing in the sky. Then the sky went dark as something massive briefly blocked out the sun before it settled over the field, revealing itself to be a massive mechanical dragon's head. It was initially dormant and just floating in the sky like a moon, but that lasted just long enough for Mokuba to announce its effect.

"When my Cyber Eltanin is summoned, all face-up monsters on the field get sent to the graveyard. Specifically sent to the graveyard, not destroyed. That means your Dragon Shield can't save your Golem Dragon this time around. Cyber Eltanin, Constellation Siege!" The eyes of the dragon lit up—and then ports all along its body opened up, revealing the monster was more of a battle station than a moon. It launched a fleet of smaller dragon heads—each of which was as large as Rebecca's Five-Headed Dragon. The fleet rocketed towards each monster on the field, swallowing them and then returning to the main body, leaving nothing on the field but Rebecca's DNA Surgery.

"I suppose I should also mention that my Cyber Eltanin gains 500 attack points for each monster that was banished in order to summon it. Since I banished six monsters, that gives it 3000 attack points. Cyber Eltanin, attack her directly with Draconis Ascension and end this duel!" The fleet of dragon heads once again emerged from the main body, though this time they all launched beams of blue energy that converged right in front of the large battle station's mouth. That main mouth then opened wide, firing its own beam that gathered the energy from every other smaller beam as it bore down on Rebecca. Her world became consumed by the blue glow and a gasp of pain as a blast of air hit her on her injured side—and then the holograms faded away as her life points hit zero and the duel ended.

Rebecca barely had time to shoot Mokuba a smile of congratulations before the tournament medic started leading her away from the duel arena. She looked over her shoulder to see Mokuba, Yugi, Joey, and Mai all following after her and decided to go along with this. Sure, it sucked being injured, and her grandpa would probably not let her travel to a tournament on her own anytime soon, but this little break in the relative privacy of the medic tent would finally let them talk to each other without having to care about who overheard.


	7. Chapter 7

Rebecca calmly lay through the start of the more thorough medical examination until she heard Mokuba ask if he could come in. Once she gave them the okay, Mokuba, Yugi, Joey, and Mai all entered the tent. At that point, Mokuba ordered the tournament medic to give them five minutes alone. Of course, he was polite about it his order, but the medic like many other KaibaCorp selected staff knew there were some situations when the wishes of a Kaiba superseded standard medical practice. Mokuba had confided in her that the practice dated back at least as far as Gozuboro buying the silence of the doctors who helped digitize Noah Kaiba's mind, and had remained in effect in more recent years to keep doctors quiet about treating coma patients who were actually the shells of people trapped in the Shadow Realm or the Orichalcos.

Rebecca supposed this counted as ethics violations, but it wasn't technically illegal. As Mokuba was quick to point out, it wasn't exactly bribery to hire doctors who were able to keep secrets and then pay a higher salary than they would get anywhere else to ensure their loyalty. Regardless, it came in handy whenever magic got involved. At this point Rebecca supposed magic was more of a widely accepted fact that everybody agreed not to talk about than an actual secret, but the details could still cause a panic so she wasn't about to discuss this in the open.

Of course, while Rebecca wanted to focus on whatever was going on with the duel spirits, everyone else seemed more focused on her. She let them all worry over her for a few seconds before she cut in. "Okay, while I appreciate the concern, I'll be fine. Mokuba, you know that I broke my leg falling off my horse last year, so this is nothing. You don't have to avoid looking at me just because I'm a little banged up. I'm more concerned about our duel spirits. Was it just me, Yugi, or were they making their presence a little bit more obvious than usual?"

Yugi's eyes went a little wide at her statement. "Well, there didn't seem to be anything wrong with the spirits, but yeah, the two of your spirits were even more solid looking than Joey's dragons were. I'm surprised you were able to notice anything, though. How were you able to tell?"

"It wasn't so much seeing them as hearing them. All of my monsters sounded like they were disappointed to need to duel against Mokuba. Well, except Five-Headed Dragon, who sounded a little too eager to attack." Trying to shake the memory of how her newest monster acted, she recalled one other moment from the duel. "Well, I also might have seen Cyber Valley nod at me… although I'm not so sure about that one."

Mokuba and Yugi both flinched back at this. Mokuba rolled his eyes. "A part of me was hoping you wouldn't see that. It's like my Duel Spirit thinks I'm in idiot or something that it had to point out that I was dueling against you. It's like it thought gesturing at you with its head was what I needed to see you." Yugi seemed to take a deep breath to collect himself before responding.

"Well, I mean there's not too much we can do about it. I'm sure in its own way it was trying to help." He then added something under his breath, but he wasn't as quiet as he thought he was. Rebecca thought it sounded like he said "Be glad you couldn't see what it was doing with its tail…" but wasn't able to ask what he meant about that before Mai cleared her throat.

"As great as all this is, I'm not sure how long we actually have to talk. Yugi, was there anything you saw that would match with what happened to Yako's spirits? Anything suspicious from the crowd or from Jamaal?" Yugi shook his head in response.

"Nothing. I mean, Jamaal's duel spirits looked like they were threatening Joey's dragons, but Joey's dragons were looking like they wanted to fry Jamaal so we can't blame his spirits for getting defensive. There wasn't anything coming from the crowd either. Either Yako was the specific target, or something else came up—"

Anything else Yugi was going to say was cut off by the announcer's voice blaring over the stadium's sound system. "Would Mokuba Kaiba and Joey Wheeler please return to the tournament arena for the final match?"

Mokuba just shot a glare out towards the entranced to the tent. "Okay, never hiring this guy again. What right does he have to order us around, especially since it's only been about a minute since the last duel?"

Rebecca couldn't help chuckling. "Guys, come on, it's fine. It's not like anybody else knows there's something more important than the tournament going on. So I got some minor injuries—it's not like that's a cause for an intermission or anything. Go out there and finish the tournament. And before you say anything, Yugi, you have to go out there as well. You won't be able to see anything going on with duel spirits through a computer screen."

Rebecca smiled inwardly as Yugi's face settled into a pout, doubtlessly because he had just about been planning to stay behind, and she had managed to shut down his argument before he could even make it. Regardless, he turned and started walking to the exit. Rebecca tried to catch Mokuba's eye before he left, but the young Kaiba once again avoided eye contact before he headed out. Joey followed his upcoming opponent after a second, giving Rebecca the privacy she needed to let out a wistful sigh.

"Okay, now that the guys are gone, would you mind explaining why you've been giving Mokuba the kicked puppy expression?" Rebecca almost bolted upright at the sound of the voice, but the flare of pain forced her to ease back onto the bed. She had completely forgotten about Mai, and since the entirety of their interactions to this point had been about an hour of talking before this tournament and briefly being in the same area during the Orichalcos conflict, the older woman was the last person she expected from the group to stay with her.

Rebecca's thoughts must have been clearly written on her face, as Mai smiled at her before sitting on a nearby chair. "Relax, Joey asked me to make sure you were okay. Besides, with how few female duelists that actually compete at a high level, I can't help but want to look out for you. Plus, you're Yugi's friend, and I'd like to think we could be friends as well."

In light of Mai's reasoning, Rebecca knew she couldn't bother leaving her earlier question unanswered. "The 'kicked puppy' expression is because ever since shortly after the attack landed, Mokuba won't even look at me anymore. I can handle being injured, but why would my best friend suddenly not want to even meet my eyes?"

Rebecca noticed the older duelist smirk for a second, before the look faded and she clenched her hands on the armrests of her chair. "Okay, there's a short and simple answer to this, but I also don't just want to dismiss this. I went through a similar situation when I was around fifteen, and anything I say might be more influenced by what I went through than what you are going through. Seeing as how I reacted to the situation in a way that lead to me leading a shallow life for about a decade before finally getting set on the right path, and then as soon as I was on my own I decided to stumble right into the Orichalcos, I'm not so sure I can even point myself in the right direction.

Still, even if I can't help you get through this, I can at least let you try to avoid the same missteps I made. One of the biggest ones is it's okay to feel out of your depth, or that you don't know what you're doing. It's fine to have no idea. I don't have to tell you how much life is changing for you over the next few years, but try to find a version of yourself you can stay true to regardless of what's happening. I spent so much time trying to recreate myself into Mai Valentine, hottest girl in the room and champion duelist that I ended up not knowing how to just be Mai. I'm sure you've got some great things going for you, what with the whole 'kid genius and champion duelist' thing, but don't let those define who you are. You'll have to find your own path. Don't worry if you can't see it right now."

Rebecca just blinked. "Okay, that's definitely the sincerest version of a common lecture I've ever heard, and it's great advice, but how does it help this specific situation?"

Now Mai's smirk returned. "Well, it's good advice in general, and I wanted to put it out there because it's certainly a lesson I could have used at thirteen and I'm sure it will come in handy in the years to come. Besides, I wanted to get the real advice that will help with more situations coming up out of the way before getting to the simple solution. As an expert in a somewhat shallow lifestyle, I can recognize what Mokuba is doing as the better of two possible reactions to the current situation. After all, he is a fifteen-year-old boy, your clothes got a bit torn up, and black is a really interesting color choice for a training bra…"

Mokuba found himself needing some deep breaths to calm himself. His displeasure with the announcer only gave him something new to focus on for a little bit of time before his mind automatically went back to the medical tent, and his best friend currently contained within it. How could he have been so stupid as to not install more safety measures for when someone took more than 8000 points of damage? He of all people should have known that some duelists here had strategies that would put their life points over 8000, as well as duelists who could easily obscene amounts of damage at once. But thanks to missing what should have been an obvious safety check, his best friend was now laid up with thankfully only minor injuries and a torn-up shirt that if she held her arms just right—

 _Stop thinking about that. She's a person, and a heck of a better one than you're being right now._ Mokuba tried to block out the distraction and focus on the duel with Joey. His opening hand now consisted of Polymerization, Cyber Dragon, Cyber Dragon Drei, Limiter Removal, and Machine Duplication. He had everything he needed to summon Cyber Twin Dragon on his first turn—though this time, there wasn't the threat of doing so much damage at once, so no injuries, no clothing damage, and no staring at—

 _What part of STOP THINKING THAT don't you understand?_ Here he was facing the second ranked duelist in the world, and he was having more of a struggle dueling his hormones. He wished he had inherited whatever it was Seto had that allowed him to be ruthlessly focused on one thing and tune out every possible distraction. Maybe then he would be able to hold up a high level of dueling, keep KaibaCorp successful, and also still get a chance to ask out—

"Well, if you're still a little out of it Mokuba, I'll take the first move." Mokuba's eyes snapped across to Joey as the older duelist drew his first card. However, Joey didn't seem particularly happy with his opening hand, sighing before making his move. "I set one monster in defense mode, and one card face down. Your move, Mokuba."

Mokuba shook himself and tried to focus on his cards. He drew his Cyber Phoenix, but with his current plan that wasn't helpful at the moment. "First, I summon Cyber Dragon Drei. With its effect, its name is treated as Cyber Dragon on the field, letting me activate Polymerization to fuse it and the Cyber Dragon in my hand to summon Cyber Twin Dragon!" The two-headed dragon that had played a major role in Mokuba's two victories in this tournament roared to life on his field, ready to once again do battle with his opponent.

"Cyber Twin Dragon, destroy his facedown monster with Evolution Twin Burst!" The left head charged up a ball of orange plasma, launching it at Joey's set monster. The card flipped over to reveal a small black mechanical dragon before it was vaporized. Joey, however, looked as though he had been expecting that outcome. "Thanks, Mokuba. When Black Metal Dragon is sent to the graveyard, I can add one Red-Eyes card from my deck to my hand." He selected his card and then signaled Mokuba to continue his turn.

For a brief instant, Mokuba was tempted to activate Limiter Removal and double Cyber Twin Dragon's attack points in order to deal 5600 damage to Joey. However, playing that card came with the downside of destroying all of his Machine monsters at the end of the turn, and leaving himself open for Joey's counterattack wasn't worth the extra 2800 points of damage he would be dealing. "Now, Cyber Twin Dragon, attack him directly!" The right head of his dragon copied the left in launching a ball of orange plasma, this time hitting Joey and knocking his life points down to 5200.

With his Battle Phase over, Mokuba continued his turn. "Now I'll set this card face down. Your move, Joey." Since Limiter Removal was a Quick-Play Spell, Mokuba was relying on playing it like a trap. If Joey summoned something with more than 2800 attack points—a likely possibility, considering he could have easily added Red-Eyes Fusion to his hand with Black Metal Dragon's effects—Mokuba could use this to make his monster stronger than anything in Joey's deck. The only issue would be if Joey decided to summon Archfiend Black Skull Dragon, but in that case Mokuba would still be able to activate the card before Joey declared an attack to get around the monster's nullification effect.

Joey drew his next card and smiled at his opponent. "You probably knew this was coming, but I think I can still find a way to surprise you. I activate Red-Eyes Fusion, sending Red-Eyes Black Dragon and Gearfried the Red-Eyes Iron Knight from my deck to the Graveyard in order to summon Red-Eyes Slash Dragon!"

Mokuba's eyes widened in shock—while he had expected Red-Eyes Fusion, he had had no idea that this new card even existed. It looked like a normal Red-Eyes, although it was partially covered in silver armor and it had a four-foot long curving blade extending from each wrist. Even the Kaiba Corporation database didn't have anything about this particular card, causing its information to load slowly and leaving Mokuba briefly in the dark about its effect—although he could see it had 2800 attack points, just like Cyber Twin Dragon.

"Okay, Joey, how new is that card? It's not often we see a card get played that isn't in our database."

Joey chuckled. "Well, I'm not surprised. Industrial Illusions just sent me this card yesterday, and since the official release is scheduled for next month they probably didn't get around to telling you about it yet."

Mokuba sighed in acceptance. There was a time when Kaiba Corporation new which cards would be coming out almost as quickly as Industrial Illusions did, but with Pegasus semi-retired and the new board members not appreciating working with a fifteen-year-old the relationship between the two companies wasn't what it used to be. "Well, I guess that can't be helped. We'll see how the adaptive card database system handles this—I'm guessing your dragon has some effects that make it worth summoning instead of summoning something stronger than my Cyber Twin Dragon."

Joey nodded. "That's right. But before I go into those effects, I'm going to activate my trap card, Red-Eyes Fang with Chain! This trap equips itself to one Red-Eyes monster and allows it to attack twice per turn. However, I'm going to use it for its second effect—by sending this card to the Graveyard, I can target one effect monster on the field and equip it to the card my trap was equipped to. Since Cyber Twin Dragon is an effect monster, I'll be making use of it on my monster!"

A black chain with a dragon-shaped hook shot out from shot out from Joey's trap card and latched around Mokuba's monster. The chain then retracted, dragging Cyber Twin Dragon to Joey's side of the field. There was a brief flash of light, and then Cyber Twin Dragon was gone while Joey's dragon was now completely encased in armor. While it hadn't been the smoothest transition, it at least looked like a plausible way to equip the existing monster to the new monster so Mokuba was happy enough with how the system had decided to handle that particular aspect of the new monster.

"When I use Red-Eyes Fang with Chain's second effect, the attack of my monster becomes equal to the attack of the monster it is equipped with. That's the main reason I went with Slash Dragon—it seemed like a waste to weaken my other fusion monsters. Besides, Slash Dragon does have some handy effects. Whenever a Red-Eyes monster declares an attack, I can take a Warrior type monster from my Graveyard and equip it to Slash Dragon to make it gain 200 attack. Also, if a card or effect that targets one of my cards is activated, I can send one Equip Card on my field to the Graveyard to negate the activation and destroy the card. Lastly, if Slash Dragon is destroyed, I can Special Summon as many monsters as possible that were equipped to this card from my Graveyard."

As Joey listed off the effects, they were added to the database and cross-referenced against the text of the card itself which the duel disk was slowly parsing through. Finally, everything about the card was uploaded. Mokuba knew there would be some tweaks needed to get the hologram to act in a unique matter, but as far as the rules of the game were concerned duel disks would now be able to use this monster appropriately. He nodded to Joey to signify the duel was ready to continue.

"Red-Eyes Slash Dragon, attack his life points directly! And of course, because I just declared an attack with a Red-Eyes monster, my Slash Dragon's effect lets me equip Gearfried the Red-Eyes Iron Knight from my Graveyard to my Slash Dragon!" The scythe blade on the dragon's right arm switched to more closely map the Warrior type monster's weapon and increased its attack to 3000. However, this move only showed the lack of polish in how the system was rendering the new card, as it bent its arm at an impossible angle in order to slash at Mokuba and bring him down to 5000 life points.

Joey shuddered a little bit at the disturbing look of his monster's attack. "Okay, please tell me you're going to work out the kinks of that animation. Anyway, that's it for my turn, so let's see what you can do." Mokuba drew his next card, but Power Bond wasn't exactly helpful when his hand consisted of one monster and one spell. He didn't have anything playable outside of his Cyber Phoenix, which would at least let him draw one card if Joey destroyed it by battle. "I set one monster in defense mode and end my turn."

Joey drew his next card and sighed in relief. "It's about time I drew something playable. First, I'll summon The Black Stone of Legend!" Despite its name, this card was neither black nor a stone. It was a red dragon's egg, and it was rather obvious what its effect could do. "I can Tribute this little guy to hatch him into a Level 7 or lower Red-Eyes monster from my deck. Come forth, Meteor Dragon Red-Eyes Impact!" The egg on the field cracked open, revealing the dragon made up of red stone that was glowing with intense heat. However, Joey wasn't done with his move yet.

"Now, I activate Dragon's Mirror! I may not have Rebecca's Five-Headed Dragon to summon with this, but I can summon any Dragon type Fusion monster. So, I remove the Red-Eyes Black Dragon from my Graveyard and the Meteor Dragon Red-Eyes Impact from my field in order to Fusion Summon Meteor Black Comet Dragon!" The familiar mirror from his last duel once again appeared on the field, although this time the mirror's surface was split in half instead of in fifths. It still absorbed the two fusion materials and then distorted until the two images overlapped and the obsidian dragon forced its way out of its confines.

"Since I just summoned Meteor Black Comet Dragon, I can send one Red-Eyes monster from my deck to the graveyard and deal half of its attack points to you as damage. So, I'll send Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon to the graveyard and inflict 1400 points of damage to you!" The black stone dragon stomped the ground, letting out a flaming shockwave that crashed into Mokuba and knocked his life points down to 3600.

"Now, Red-Eyes Slash dragon, destroy his facedown monster!" The awkwardly animated dragon once again did a physically impossible slashing motion, cutting the revealed phoenix in half. Mokuba turned his attention to Joey. "Thanks for repaying the favor from when I destroyed Black Metal Dragon. When Cyber Phoenix is destroyed by battle, I get to draw one card!" He drew, but the end result of Magnet Force was less than ideal—he wasn't exactly worried about protecting his monsters from other monster effects when he really needed to just get a monster on the field.

As if to accentuate that need, Joey continued with his Battle Phase. "Now, Meteor Black Comet Dragon, attack him directly with Halley's Hellstorm!" Hundreds of flaming chunks of rock broke off of Joey's dragon and hovered in the air for a second before they all blasted toward Mokuba. The barrage took him all the way down to his last hundred life points. He needed a moment to catch his breath after the blast, but Joey was done with his turn so there wasn't any danger of getting blasted off of his feet like Rebecca had.

Still, Mokuba knew that he was fast approaching the end of this duel. With only 100 life points and Joey's ability to deal large amounts of burn damage, it didn't really matter that Joey had two monsters with 3000 or more attack points. It would all come down to his last card—and when he drew the exact perfect card for the situation, he couldn't help but sigh in relief.

"Well, Joey, it all comes down to this. Either you have a card you can activate from your hand, or I win this duel. I summon Cyber Dragon Core in attack mode!" The miniature Cyber Dragon appeared on the field, looking thoroughly underwhelming with its 500 attack points. "Now, since I normal summoned this monster I get to add a Cyber spell or trap to my hand, but I already had everything I needed anyway. I activate Machine Duplication! This lets me target one Machine type monster with 500 or less attack and summon two additional copies of that monster from my deck. However, my Cyber Dragon Core's name is treated as Cyber Dragon on the field, so I get to Special Summon two Cyber Dragons from my deck!"

The two 2100 attack point dragons roared their way unto the field, though Mokuba wasn't planning on keeping them for long. "Now, I activate Power Bond to fuse all three of my monsters into Cyber End Dragon!" Cyber Dragon Core started stretching out while the other two Cyber Dragons were welded onto its body by a plasma torch. When the process finished, a three-headed dragon glared at Joey with bolts of plasma ready in each of its mouths. However, the older duelist just shook his head.

"I think you've miscalculated, Mokuba. Even with Power Bond doubling Cyber End Dragon's attack points, that only gives it 8000. My weakest monster is Slash Dragon with 3000 attack points, so you can only do 5000 points of damage to me. I'll still have 200 life points left, and Power Bond will inflict 4000 damage to you at the end of this turn."

Mokuba just gave his opponent the trademarked Kaiba smirk. "That only matters if we get to the End Phase, and we won't make it out of the Battle Phase. I activate my facedown card, Limiter Removal! For the rest of this turn, all of my Machine monsters have their attack doubled at the cost of destroying them during the End Phase. So now, my Cyber End Dragon has 16000 attack points!"

Mokuba's monster started growing in size and crackling with electricity as it absorbed all the power it could to ready its devastating attack. However, it seemed a little too successful at powering up, as suddenly all the holograms winked out of existence and the lights in the stadium immediately cut out. Mokuba and Joey could only stare dumbstruck at each other, with Joey eventually voicing that confusion

"So, did something go wrong where the duel disk can't handle something with 16000 attack and there was a power surge, or what just happened here?" Mokuba shrugged and shook his head.

"That can't be the case. First off, we've seen older versions of the duel disk handle infinite attack points, and even ignoring that between Dartz and Anubis we had plenty of monsters higher than 16000. Even on this version of the duel disk I know it can handle higher values, because back when I was testing this deck it was legal to have more than one copy of Limiter Removal and I got Cyber End Dragon up to 32000 against Yugi. Besides, the duel disks all get power directly from the KaibaCorp network—they aren't even on the same power grid as the rest of this stadium. The only way this could happen is if something went wrong with the KaibaCorp network and the resulting power surge wiped out any neighboring…electronics…"

His voice trailed off as he discarded his now dead tournament microphone and activated the communicator sewn into his collar. "Roland, come in. We're noticing something strange here with the KaibaCorp network. Can you get me a status report?" However, he got no response, not even the background noise that indicated there was a connection at all. Sighing, he turned back to Joey.

"Okay, something is seriously wrong. However, the KaibaCorp network should be back up momentarily. Everything has a redundant power source, and we even took into account the potential for a direct hit from an EMP." Seeing that Joey was just about to accuse him of being paranoid, Mokuba continued on. "Before you say anything, remember that you met Gozaburo. While we could never prove that he sold nukes to people, it wasn't something we were confident enough about. When Seto broke all of our weapons contracts, we wanted to be prepared for whatever retaliation could come our way."

Joey snapped his mouth shut, doubtlessly remembering when Gozaburo had tried to launch a terrorist attack across the world from the safety of his virtual creation. Luckily, Mokuba didn't need to dwell on his adoptive father for long, as the power came back to the duel disks and the monsters all reappeared. The stadium was still powerless, but at least the network was back up. Switching back on his communicator, he immediately heard Roland's voice.

"Sir, there's been a surge across the KaibaCorp network that brought everything down. All of Japan is currently in a blackout, and we are working on distributing emergency power to designated areas now. There was also an explosion at the old space elevator that may be related—we've dispatched a team to investigate and will fill you in as soon as we know more."

Mokuba nodded and softly replied, "Thanks, Roland." Then he turned his attention to the stadium, where the crowd was in the stage of silence that usually preceded panic. Knowing he didn't want to add even more problems today, he called out as loudly as he could.

"Well, everyone, I know I promised this as a return to the old days of tournaments, but it looks like there's been a little more excitement than I hoped. The lights will be back on shortly, but until then, we've got a tournament to finish. Afterwards, I'll be sticking around to meet any fans, and I'm sure we can convince some of the other participants to join as well." Seeing Joey nod at this, Mokuba continued.

"Now, what do you say we end this duel? Cyber End Dragon, destroy his Meteor Black Comet Dragon with Eternal Evolution Burst!" The dragon's three heads each unleashed a stream of violet plasma at Joey's dragon, atomizing it and carrying on without slowing down. The attack hit Joey and would have ripped through 12500 life points if he had had that many left—but once his life points hit zero, the attack faded away along with the rest of the holograms. The crowd gave a rather subdued cheer, but Mokuba quickly ignored that as Roland's voice returned over his communicator.

"Sir, we're going to need you to come back to Japan right away. We believe we've found the cause of all of this. He's not conscious, but he's definitely alive. Sir, your brother has returned to this dimension."

Suddenly, Mokuba couldn't even tell that he was in a crowded stadium. All he was aware of were Roland's words ringing in his ears. He couldn't help the tears that formed in his eyes: his plan had worked. Seto was back!

 _Breaking News: Seto Kaiba Found in Crashed Space Pod_

 _Written by Hiroto Nagisa_

 _Kaiba Corporation representatives have confirmed that Seto Kaiba was found earlier today in a crashed experimental pod from their space program. Kaiba, the former CEO of Kaiba Corporation, was confirmed missing after a malfunction 18 months ago, leaving his younger brother in charge of the company. While the representatives were unable to confirm if this is related to the recent blackout that necessitated emergency distribution of electricity nationwide, they have confirmed this is the biological body of Seto Kaiba and not another AI. Kaiba was taken to an undisclosed medical facility for treatment._

The ringing of his phone drew his attention away from the article, which was likely for the best. It was hard enough aiming to defeat Yugi Muto, but if Seto Kaiba was back in the picture that was one more powerful enemy he would have to contend with. Hopefully, his associate would have some good news.

"Hello, Jamaal. How did the tournament go?"

"Well, it could have gone better. I managed to beat my first opponent, but I got matched up against Joey Wheeler in the second round. I never stood a chance."

"Were you at least able to defeat his Red-Eyes? It doesn't take a victory for my magic to tag a duel spirit—just defeating the monster is enough."

"No—he actually pulled off a first-turn kill on me. Never got to play a single card. I don't think it really matters though—I'm pretty sure he is already well aware of duel spirits, considering he almost sent an army after me. He doesn't need our help to see how wide the world of dueling really is."

He fell back to his stage training to avoid sighing. It was a pity not being able to exert any influence, no matter how slight, on Joey Wheeler. That would have given him the best chance for a shot at Yugi Muto, but Joey proved too much for even the most skilled of his associates to defeat. However, perhaps all was not lost here.

"You say he sent an army of spirits after you—does this mean my power finally helped you see the duel spirits of others?"

He heard a sigh on the other end of the line. "Not quite. It wasn't too hard to figure out though when I saw something that looked like a heat haze surrounding me. Then Endymion and Silent Magician came out to protect me, so it wasn't hard to put two and two together. You've already helped me so much, though, that I'm sure with a little more time I'll get there. Maybe once I find my true guardian spirits. These Silent Magicians were really close, but it felt just a little bit off."

 _That_ was certainly an interesting bit of news. Once he was able to identify Jamaal's true guardian, he would be able to exert more of an influence on the young man. That would allow him to drop certain aspects of this tiresome ruse, but until that point it was important to keep his most valuable asset loyal.

"Yes, I'm sure with continued work we'll be able to find your guardian. However, you did say you managed to defeat your first opponent. Who will I be scheduling some time to meet with?"

"Yako Tenma. He strikes me as the kind of person who won't take much convincing—I could tell he really cared for his monsters, so he should happily jump at the chance to interact with their duel spirits."

This time, he didn't bother hiding the emotion from his voice. Apparently, Jamaal had succeeded in recruiting an asset of even greater value than he had hoped—with access to the leader of an Industrial Illusions branch, he would be able to outfit his associates with the perfect cards to close the skill gap between them and his target.

"Well, I suppose I better start brushing up on my Russian, then. I'll have to fly out to talk with Mr. Tenma in the near future. If I may ask, what was his main monster? I just like to know so I can have an easier time preparing."

"Well, his ace monster was Beast Machine King Barbaros Ür, and that's the one that got tagged. So, I'd guess in a few weeks you'll be able to add that card to your little collection."

"Understood. Thank you so much for your help, Jamaal. You've just brought us one step closer to a world where everyone can be with their proper duel spirit."

Hanging up the phone, he brought out his personal favorite collection of cards, the cards to represent his vital associates. At the time there weren't many: just Reshef the Dark Being, Vennominaga the Deity of Poisonous Snakes, Tragoedia, Seven-Armed Fiend, and of course his own card. However, there were also a few blank cards to represent associates like Jamaal whose spirits were unknown at this point, as well as a few for associates whose spirits were known but did not have a card available. Once he added Barbaros Ür to this list, though, he would no longer be constrained to the cards that still existed…

* * *

Author's Note: Thanks for sticking with me through this story! I hope you managed to enjoy the tournament and that all the duels managed to keep you engaged. We've got some important pieces set up for the upcoming stories. The next story is with my beta reader, and I just scripted out another couple of duels for story 4 so writing on that will be beginning soon. Special thanks to Amazing Spectacular Spider Man for favoriting the story, melomariana29 for following and favoriting the story, and lalalei for following, favoriting, and leaving five reviews!


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